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Aperture vs Interstice vs Orifice

Aperture, Interstice and Orifice denote an opening allowing passage through or in and out.

Aperture is applied especially to any opening in a thing that otherwise presents a solid or closed surface or structure; it may be applied both to an opening that is a flaw (as a crack or cleft) or to one that is structurally essential.

  • daylight filtered through small apertures in the dungeon’s outside wall
  • windows are apertures to admit light and air
  • the aperture of a camera
  • pores are minute apertures in the skin that are the openings of skin glands

Interstice is applied to any unfilled space or gap or interval especially in a fabric (in its widest sense) or in a mass. It is especially applicable to any of the openings in something that is loose in texture, coarse-grained, layered, or piled up.

  • the interstices between the stones of the wall were not filled with mortar
  • a mesh is one of the interstices in a fish net

Interstice is also used of time in the sense of an empty interval.

  • what… do they do . . . in all the mysterious interstices of their lives?
    L. P. Smithy

Orifice is applied to any opening that serves chiefly as a mouth or as a vent.

  • the orifice of the bladder
  • the orifice of a chimney
  • the orifice of a wound
  • horror . . . when Mongibello belches forth from all its orifices its sulphureous fires
    Borrow