As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I took a break… a hiatus… from the publication of my vanity posts. This was primarily because of an extremely busy schedule during the last week or so of June, but I’m happy to report that I’m slowly getting back to these vanity posts. So… I hope you’ve found your way back and will continue to join me during the coming days in my ongoing “vanity post experiment.
Anyway… I’ve long thought that “hiatus” was a strange word, and, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure whether I’d used the word properly above, so I figured I’d better look into the word to satisfy my curiosity AND make sure I was using it as it was intended to be used. Went to my favorite online resource (dictionary.com) since my good ol’ Webster’s dictionary wasn’t at hand, and I discovered that I had, indeed, used the word properly — according to the first definition listed for “hiatus”:
“a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.”
Yay! That made me feel good, but I was still curious about the history of the word, so I continued scrolling down through the other four definitions until I came to what I was looking for: the “etymology” or origin of the word “hiatus”. This is what I found:
“Origin of hiatus
First recorded in 1555-65; from Latin hiatus “opening, gap,” equivalent to hia(re) “to gape, open” + tus, noun suffix”
Here’s dictionary.com’s explanation for the word “hiatus”:
“A temporary gap, pause, or absence can be called a hiatus. When your favorite TV show is on hiatus, that means there are no new episodes — not forever, just for a little while.
Even things that go on for a long time take a break once in a while: one kind of a break is a hiatus. If someone has to leave her job for a time, she’s going on hiatus. A touring band will need to take a hiatus if the lead singer gets in an accident. The key thing about a hiatus is that it’s an interruption of something that was happening, but it’s not a permanent break.”
Even writers need to take a hiatus, especially if they get so busy that they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. So, yeah… I did NOT take a permanent break from the publication of my vanity posts… just a hiatus. It’s good to be back!