Aperture

How to spell aperture

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce aperture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aperture mean?

1. nounAn opening, hole, or gap, especially one that controls how much light passes through a lens or instrument.

Aperture in a sentence

• Widening the lens aperture let more light reach the sensor.

• A narrow aperture in the wall allowed a single beam of sunlight through.

Where does aperture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin apertura, which simply meant 'an opening' or 'a gap'. That noun was built on apertus, the past participle of the verb aperire, meaning 'to open' or 'to uncover'. English took the word in during the 1400s, at first for any literal hole or opening in a surface, and it later settled into the precise technical sense used in optics and photography, where the aperture is the adjustable opening that lets light into a lens. The same aperire root lies behind 'overt' (from apertus by way of French, meaning openly visible) and even the musical 'overture', the opening piece of a performance. Remembering that the heart of the word is the Latin for 'open' helps fix the spelling, since the awkward middle is just apert- followed by the familiar -ure ending.

How the word is built

• apert- (from Latin aperire: to open)
• -ure (noun suffix forming a result or thing)