"accidental gap" meaning in English

See accidental gap in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: accidental gaps [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} accidental gap (plural accidental gaps)
  1. (linguistics) A potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite the fact that it would be permissible by the grammatical rules of that language. Synonyms: lexical gap Hypernyms: gap, lacuna Related terms: hapax legomenon, nonword, pseudoword Translations (potential word): lakuna [feminine] (Polish)

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "accidental gaps",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "accidental gap (plural accidental gaps)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Entries with translation boxes",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
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          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
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          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Polish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Linguistics",
          "orig": "en:Linguistics",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite the fact that it would be permissible by the grammatical rules of that language."
      ],
      "hypernyms": [
        {
          "word": "gap"
        },
        {
          "word": "lacuna"
        }
      ],
      "id": "en-accidental_gap-en-noun-XVxR6-PF",
      "links": [
        [
          "linguistics",
          "linguistics"
        ],
        [
          "word",
          "word#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "sense",
          "sense#English:_any_particular_meaning_of_a_word"
        ],
        [
          "morpheme",
          "morpheme#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "exist",
          "exist#Verb"
        ],
        [
          "language",
          "language#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "grammatical",
          "grammar#Noun"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(linguistics) A potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite the fact that it would be permissible by the grammatical rules of that language."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "hapax legomenon"
        },
        {
          "word": "nonword"
        },
        {
          "word": "pseudoword"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "lexical gap"
        }
      ],
      "topics": [
        "human-sciences",
        "linguistics",
        "sciences"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "lang_code": "pl",
          "sense": "potential word",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "lakuna"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "accidental gap"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "accidental gaps",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "accidental gap (plural accidental gaps)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "hapax legomenon"
    },
    {
      "word": "nonword"
    },
    {
      "word": "pseudoword"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Polish translations",
        "en:Linguistics"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite the fact that it would be permissible by the grammatical rules of that language."
      ],
      "hypernyms": [
        {
          "word": "gap"
        },
        {
          "word": "lacuna"
        }
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "linguistics",
          "linguistics"
        ],
        [
          "word",
          "word#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "sense",
          "sense#English:_any_particular_meaning_of_a_word"
        ],
        [
          "morpheme",
          "morpheme#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "exist",
          "exist#Verb"
        ],
        [
          "language",
          "language#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "grammatical",
          "grammar#Noun"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(linguistics) A potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite the fact that it would be permissible by the grammatical rules of that language."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "lexical gap"
        }
      ],
      "topics": [
        "human-sciences",
        "linguistics",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "lang_code": "pl",
      "sense": "potential word",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "lakuna"
    }
  ],
  "word": "accidental gap"
}

Download raw JSONL data for accidental gap meaning in English (1.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-08-28 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-08-05 using wiktextract (872fc7b and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.