If we want to know the etymological origin of the term absence, we would have to go to Latin, symbolically speaking. And it comes from the Latin word “absentia”, which in turn derives from “absens”, which can be translated as “that is out of place.”
Absence is the action and effect of being absent or being absent. The verb absent, for its part, refers to making someone move away from a place, to make something disappear or to separate from a place.
For example: “The team felt the absence of its captain”, “I don’t know what I am going to do in your absence”, “If I add another absence, I will be free from school”, “We have to think about how to hide the absence of Gómez during his vacations ”.
Absence, therefore, can be the time someone is absent: “After two months of absence, the German tennis player returns to the circuit”, “I wanted to tell you that my absence in recent weeks was due to a health problem of my son ”, “ It was eight months of absence for personal reasons, but I am ready to go back to work ”.
The lack or deprivation of something can also be named as absence: “The absence of rainfall is a big problem for the entire agricultural region of the country”, “I do not understand how you can live with the absence of electricity at home”, “The country it is suffering from the absence of foreign investment ”.
For medicine, absence is a sudden, but temporary, suppression of consciousness.
However, we cannot forget what is known as typical absences either. These are very brief episodes of seizures that occur as a result of completely abnormal electrical activity in the brain.
Those usually occur in minors between 6 and 12 years old and have symptoms ranging from alterations in what is alertness to tremors or clumsiness in the hands through hyperventilation.
The psychology, meanwhile, considers the absence as the distraction of the mood regarding the situation in which an individual is: “After the blow I suffered an absence of a few minutes, but I’m fine”, “What is owes your absence? You are not paying attention to what I am counting ”.
In addition to all the above, we would have to say that in the field of music there are various songs that use the word in question as their title. That would be the case of “This absence” by David Bisbal, which tells of the suffering one has for a love that left, or “Absence” by Rosa López.
This last composition is an adaptation of the famous “Adagio de Albinoni”, a work created in 1945 by the Italian Remo Giazotto. It seems that he created it by taking as a source of inspiration some documents that were found among the ruins of the Dresden Library when it was bombed during the Second World War. Those were the scores of a trio sonata that had been created by the Venetian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni, who stood out within the field of opera for his instrumental music.
