Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In zoology and anatomy, a point; a dot; a pit; a papilla; some little place, as if a mere point, in any way distinguished.
- noun [capitalized] In conchology, a genus of geophilous pulmonate gastropods, type of the family Punctidæ: so called on account of its minute size.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A point.
- noun (Anat.) Same as Blind spot, under
Blind . - noun near point. See under
Point . - noun far point. See under
Point . - noun (Bot.) the terminal cell of a stem, or of a leaf bud, from which new growth originates.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun anatomy a sharp tip of any part of the
anatomy ; apoint or other smallarea
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (anatomy) a point or small area
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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She is a good writer, though a bit of a smarty pants using words like "punctum" instead of "point".
I Heart Lynn Crosbie The Nag 2009
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I am equally as scathing at “old lags” doing likewise. punctum on 12 March 2010
STARSHIP – “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” | FreakyTrigger 2010
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I started this as 120 bpm to the punctum and adjusted as the episemas and text demand.
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The Swede on the cusp of 50 can accept this. punctum on 12 March 2010
STARSHIP – “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” | FreakyTrigger 2010
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Perhaps studium and punctum merge in one detail: look at my mother's hemline – she never wore a dress that short before or since.
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It's all punctum – if there's any studium there you can have it for free and use it for a boring sociological thesis.
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In Camera Lucida, Barthes distinguishes between the "studium" and the "punctum" of the photograph.
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The studium denotes the cultural or political interpretation of the photograph; the punctum denotes the personally touching detail that establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.
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As for punctum, I can nearly smell my mother's hair, almost feel the fabric of her dress, sense the lovable vulnerability of my little brother Neil (he's in the striped shirt).
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It's that punctum thing that Barthes talks about, I think, that's the coil & spring you talk about, and that's not about narrative.
Scale Lemon Hound 2009
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Punning on the pinhole history of early photographic technologies like the camera obscura, Roland Barthes used the word punctum (literally, “sting, speck, cut, little hole”) to name the disarming effect of certain images.
The Kept and the Killed Erica X Eisen 2024
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