Other forms: gaps
A gap is an empty space between two things. A missing tooth, a break in a hedge, a hole in a fence.
It works physically and figuratively with equal ease, so a gap in the traffic, a gap in the market and a gap in somebody's knowledge are all standard. Britain has the gap year taken between school and university. The pay gap and the generation gap describe distances rather than holes. There is also a famous instruction on the London Underground about minding the gap.
1noungapAn empty space or opening between two things.
“He squeezed through a gap in the hedge.”
2noundifferenceA difference or something missing.
“There is a serious gap in the evidence.”
A gap is a gape. Old Norse gap meant an empty space or a chasm, from gapa, to gape or to scream: a mouth held open wide.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰeh₂- — to open wide, gape
Proto-Germanic
*gapōną
Old Norse
gap — an empty space, gap, chasm
Middle English
gap//gappe
English, today
gap
Built from
Middle English gap//gappe, from Old Norse gap (“an empty space, gap, chasm”), from gapa (“to gape, scream”), from Proto-Germanic gapōną, from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰeh₂- (“to open wide, gape”). Related to Danish gab (“an expanse, space, gap”), Old English ġeap (“open space, expanse”). a doublet of gape.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA