The verb open refers to making something stop being closed or covered, revealing what is hidden or uncovering something. The notion of openness is linked to this action, although it can also mention other things.
A crack, crack, crack, or hole can also be referred to as openings: “We will have to make an opening in the wall to pass the pipes”, “The explosion left a huge opening in the ceiling”, “Please get a little cement so we can cover the opening ยป.
In phonetics, the opening is linked to how the organs responsible for phonation open and expand when allowing air to pass through. Depending on the sound you want to emit, the opening will be larger or smaller.
Those sounds that allow to be pronounced without the intervention of the phonic organs, are made with a much larger opening; in the case of our language, it happens with the vowels, where the sound of the A is made with a larger opening than the rest of the vowels, opposite to that of the I.
This term is opposed to that of closing, which refers to the contraction of the sound organs to let the air pass and produce a specific sound.
Open or opening?
This term gives rise to many confusions by closely resembling another: “openness.” Below we will try to establish the differences between the two, in order to know in the future when to use each one because, despite what many claim, these two concepts are not interchangeable.
If we are guided by the definitions that both words receive in the dictionary, we can say that although both refer to the action of opening something, there are certain differences. Openness is more advisable to talk about that action itself, to refer to an attitude of tolerance towards a certain situation (openness to sexual diversity), to the action of starting an undertaking (opening of premises) and also to talk from the moment in which, through a certain mechanism, it is possible to open a hole (diaphragm opening).
Aperture, on the other hand, is more suitable to refer to a slit or hole that has already occurred and is permanent, such as a wide space in the middle of two mountains (opening between mountains) or a hole through which light or air passes. (window opening).
In photography there is the aperture of the diaphragm, which many people indiscriminately call an aperture (considering that the concept comes from the shutter). However, the correct one is openness because we are talking about a hole that can be opened mechanically but is not always in that state. To better understand this we can clarify that in the case of a telescope, the hole through which it is observed is always open, which is why it is called an opening. Unfortunately, despite this clear difference in the meanings of the terms, it should be noted that in the world of photography the incorrect term is used more frequently.
Given the great contradictions that these terms generate, it is normal to find, even in important dictionaries, that for optics, the aperture is the diameter of a lens, which establishes what the angle of a light beam will be when focusing on the image plane., although in this case it is also talking about openness.
To finish, we can also differentiate this term with that of overture, which refers to a musical piece that serves as an introduction to a lyrical composition, whether it be an opera, an oratory or any other composition of this style.
