Entry: rheostat (n.)
In context: "Orin liked to adjust the co-op's rheostat all the way down when Joelle wasn't home and haul out the diskettes and make Jiffy Pop and watch her little ten-second clips of him over and over."
Definition: See (b):
A variable resistor used to control the current in a circuit; spec. (a) one comprising a wire-wound core along which a sliding contact can be moved, used for controlling large currents; (b) (in later use) one used to control the brightness of electric lighting; a dimmer; also in figurative contexts. Cf. potentiometer n. 2.
Other: I sort of feel like today's entries are maybe pretty commonplace, but they jumped out at me.
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 298
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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