Building a Better Vocabulary

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later become the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern
Orthodox Church.

Diaspora (noun)


The movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an
established or ancestral homeland.

z Diaspora comes from two Greek words, dia and speirein, that were
joined together as a compound word meaning “to scatter across.”
The word was used in the Bible to refer to the scattering of the
Jewish communities outside Palestine (or modern-day Israel) after
their exile by the Babylonians. The word is capitalized in reference
to this Jewish Diaspora.

z However, diaspora has added a more general meaning to describe
any large movement or migration of people or culture. For example,
“Many families who left their homeland during the diaspora
struggled to retain their culture in their new country.”

z Diaspora can also refer to the actual group of people who have
settled far from their ancestral homelands or to the place where
those people live.

Lacuna (noun)


A gap or hole where something should be.

z +DYH\RXHYHUZRQGHUHGZK\(QJOLVKKDVJHQGHUVSHFL¿FZRUGV
for siblings (brother and sister  DQG JHQGHUVSHFL¿F ZRUGV IRU
parents (mother and father EXWQRVLPLODUJHQGHUVSHFL¿FZRUGVIRU
PDOHFRXVLQVDQGIHPDOHFRXVLQV"
ż For that matter, why do we have collective terms for our
mothers and fathers (parents) and for our sisters and brothers
(siblings EXWQRWIRURXUDXQWVDQGXQFOHV"
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