dust mote

plural dust motes · alternative dustmote

1. A mote or speck of dust.

   It’s at this point that the legend of Shakespeare and Company gains life; the residue of its patrons’ most brilliant ideas settling on the books like dust motes.

   2019 November 15, Hannah Williams, “100 years of Shakespeare and Company: how a bookshop became a Paris landmark”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 Nov 2019

   2 more examples

   With time running out, the complex compass he had first imagined was jettisoned in favor of a simpler, more achievable effect: artisans at Digital Domain added digital particles to previously shot footage, making the images emitting from the clockwork mechanism look as if they were composed of magical dust motes.

   2007 December 9, Ron Magid, “Effects go with the flow to keep ‘Compass’ on course”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Mar 2023

   A high-octane debate has broken out among the world’s physicists about what would happen if you jumped into a black hole, a fearsome gravitational monster that can swallow matter, energy and even light. You would die, of course, but how? Crushed smaller than a dust mote by monstrous gravity, as astronomers and science fiction writers have been telling us for decades?

   2013 August 13, Dennis Overbye, “A Black Hole Mystery Wrapped in a Firewall Paradox”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 13 Aug 2013