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