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Saturday, 4 February 2012


Entry:    aperture (n.)

In context:  “…hearing his head’s pulse as receding thunder and watching his vision’s circle shrink as a red aperture around his sight rotates steadily in from the edges, at the height of which he could think only, despite the pain and the panic, of what a truly dumb and silly way this was, after all this time, to die, a thought which the towel and tape denied expression via the rueful grin with which the best men meet the dumbest ends…”

Definition:  Optics. The space through which light passes in any optical instrument (though there is no material opening)

Other:    This one is more interesting, I think, for the sentence than for the term.  Look, I don’t want to harp on and on about how impressed I am with Wallace’s prose, but that’s just fantastic.

SNOOT score:   1

Page:   59

Source:   Oxford English Dictionary

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