Accidental gap

Although this potential word is phonologically well-formed according to English phonotactics, it happens to not exist.

[1] For example, Thai has several sets of stop consonants that differ in terms of voicing (whether or not the vocal cords vibrate) and aspiration (whether a puff of air is released).

[4] Many potential words that could be made following morphological rules of a language do not enter the lexicon.

For example, several verbs in Russian do not have a first-person singular form in non-past tense.

[8] Morris Halle called this defective verb paradigm an example of an accidental gap.

Examples include *effable and ineffable, *kempt and unkempt,[9] or *whelmed and overwhelmed.

A gap in semantics occurs when a particular meaning distinction visible elsewhere in the lexicon is absent.

For example, English words describing family members generally show gender distinction.

The separate words predicted on the basis of this semantic contrast are absent from the language, or at least from many speakers' dialects.