o·pen


-adjective
1. not closed or barred at the time, as a doorway by a door, a window by a sash, or a gateway by a gate: to leave the windows open at night.
2. (of a door, gate, window sash, or the like) set so as to permit passage through the opening it can be used to close.
3. having no means of closing or barring: an open portico.
4. having the interior immediately accessible, as a box with the lid raised or a drawer that is pulled out.
5. relatively free of obstructions to sight, movement, or internal arrangement: an open floor plan.
6. constructed so as to be without cover or enclosure on the top or on some or all sides: an open boat.
7. having relatively large or numerous spaces, voids, or intervals: an open architectural screen; open ranks of soldiers.
8. perforated or porous: an open texture.
9. relatively unoccupied by buildings, fences, trees, etc.: open country.
10. not covered or closed; with certain parts open: open eyes; open mouth.
11. without a covering, esp. a protective covering; unprotected; unenclosed; exposed: an open wound; open electrical wires.
12. extended or unfolded: an open newspaper.
13. without restrictions as to who may participate: an open competition; an open session.
14. accessible or available to follow: the only course still open to us.
15. not taken or filled; not preempted; available; vacant: Which job is open?
16. ready for or carrying on normal trade or business: the new store is now open.
17. not engaged or committed: Have you any open time on Monday?
18. accessible, as to appeals, ideas, or offers: to be open to suggestion.
19. exposed to general view or knowledge; existing, carried on, etc., without concealment: open disregard of the rules.
20. acting publicly, or without concealment, as a person.
21. unreserved, candid, or frank, as persons or their speech, aspect, etc.: an open manner.
22. generous, liberal, or bounteous: to give with an open hand.
23. liable or subject: open to question; open to retaliation.
24. undecided; unsettled: several open questions.
25. without effective or enforced legal, commercial, or moral regulations: an open town.
26. unguarded by an opponent: an open wide receiver.
27. noting the part of the sea beyond headlands or enclosing areas of land: to sail on the open seas.
28. free of ice, as a body of water or a seaport.
29. free of navigational hazards: an open coast.
30. (of a seaport) available for foreign trade; not closed by government regulations or by considerations of health.
31. (of a microphone) in operation; live.
32. (of a delimiting punctuation mark) occuring at the beginning of a group of words or characters that is set off, as from surrounding text: open parenthesis; open quotes.
33. not yet balanced or adjusted, as an account.
34. not constipated, as the bowels.
. . .
40. free from frost; mild or moderate: an open winter.
. . .


-verb
43. to move (a door, window sash, etc.) from a shut or closed position so as to admit of passage.
44. to render (a doorway, gateway, window, etc.) unobstructed by moving a door, window sash, etc., away from it.
45. to render the interior (or a box, drawer, etc.) readily accessible.
46. to clear (a passage, channel, etc.) of obstructions.
47. to clear (areas or passages in the body).
48. to give access to; make accessible or available, as for use: to open a port for trade.
49. to establish for business purposes or for public use: to open an office.
50. to set in action, begin, start, or commence (sometimes followed by up): to open a campaign.
51. to uncover, lay bare, or expose to view.
52. to expand, unfold, or spread out: to open a map.
53. to make less compact, less closely spaced, or the like: to open ranks.
54. to disclose, reveal, or divulge.
55. to render accessible to knowledge, enlightenment, sympathy, etc.: to open one's mind.
56. to cut, blast, or break into: to open a safe with nitro.
57. to make or produce (an opening) by cutting or breaking, or by pushing aside or removing obstructions: to open a way through a crowd.
58. to make an incision or opening in: to open a boil.
. . .


-verb (used without object)
62. to open, as a door, building, box, or enclosure.
63. to afford access: a door that opens into a garden.
64. to have an opening, passage, or outlet: The room opens into a corridor.
65. (of a building, theater, etc.) to open its doors to the public: The museum opens at one o'clock.
66. to begin a session or term, as a school.
67. to begin a season, series of performances, or tour, as a theatrical company: The play will open in Boston.
68. to begin, start, or commence an activity: The game opened with the national anthem.
69. to part, or seem to part, so as to allow or reveal a passage: At last the cliffs opened to show us that we were heading for the sea.
70. to become disclosed or revealed.
71. to come into view; become more visible or plain.
72. to become receptive to knowledge, sympathy, etc., as the mind.
73. to disclose or reveal one's knowledge, thoughts, feelings, etc.
74. to unfold or expand, as a blossom, so as to reveal the interior.
75. to spread out or expand, as the hand or a fan.
76. to spread apart or separate, as pages or a book, newspaper, etc.: Open to page 32.
77. to spread or come apart; burst: The wound opened.
78. to become less compact, less closely spaced, or the like: The wound opened.
. . .


-noun
81. an open or clear space.
82. the open air.
83. the open water, as of the sea.
84. an opening or aperture.
85. an opening or opportunity.
86. a contest or tournament in which both amateurs and professionals may compete, esp. in golf and tennis.
87. the open,  a) the unenclosed or unobstructed country.  b) the outdoors: Vacations in the open are fine for the entire family.  c) the condition of being unconcealed, recognized, or publicly known: The scandal is now out in the open.


-verb phrase
88. open up,  a) to become or make open.  b) to expand, esp. before the eye: A breathtaking panorama opened up as we reached the top of the hill.  c) to achieve the initial development of: to open up a business office; to open up trade with China.  d) Slang . to increase speed or the speed of (a vehicle).

-Literary reference .
89. Whitman's earth: "The earth does not argue, / Is not pathetic, has no arrangements / Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, / Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, / Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out, / Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."


90. "They are large in that they are complex (generated from an indeterminate number of distinct sources, distributed through many, or n dimensions), and fundamentally open (i.e. wild) and unfinished." Kwinter, p. 189.


References - WILDNESS (Prolegomena to a New Urbanism), Sanford Kwinter; A Song of the Rolling Earth, Walt Whitman; www.dictionary.reference.com

(sub·sump·tion) sub·sume


-verb
1. to consider or include (an idea, term, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one.
2. to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule.
3. to take up into a more inclusive classification.
4. "There is no central control, and the 'design' does not come from the whole and trickle down to the parts, but rather travels in the opposite direction. Such bottom-up systems are called 'subsumption architectures.'" Kwinter, p. 189.


References - WILDNESS (Prolegomena to a New Urbanism), Sanford Kwinter; Random House Webster's College Dictionary

em·bod·y


-verb (used with object)
1. to give a concrete form to; express, personify, or exemplify in concrete form: to embody an idea in an allegorical painting.
2. to provide with a body; incarnate; make corporeal: to embody a spirit.
3. to collect into or include in a body; organize; incorporate.
4. to embrace or comprise.

5. "diagrams do not themselves produce form... but rather [they] emit formative and organizational influence, shape-giving pressures that cannot help but be 'embodied' in all subsequent states of the given region of concrete reality in which they act." Kwinter as quoted in Corner, p.166. 


References - Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes, James Corner; www.dictionary.reference.com

dis·pos·i·tif

–noun

1. French word meaning 'device.'

2. "refers to the tactical but subtle and tempered disposition of parts (as in arrangement, complexion, management, and array.)" Corner, p.160.

3. Foucault uses the term in his 1977 The Confession of the Flesh interview, where he answers the question, 'What is the meaning or methodological function for you of this term, apparatus (dispositif)?' as follows:

"The apparatus itself is the system. What I'm trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions — in short, the 'said' as much as the 'unsaid.' Such are the elements of the apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements."

German linguist Siegfried Jager defines Foucault's dispositif as:

"the interaction of discursive behavior (i.e. speech and thoughts based upon a shared knowledge pool), non-discursive behavior (i.e. acts based upon knowledge), and manifestations of knowledge by means of acts or behaviors [...]. Dispositifs can thus be imagined as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, the complexity interwoven and integrated dipositifs add up in their entirety to a dispositif of all society."

Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben defines apparatus/dispositif as:

"Further expanding the already large class of Foucaultian apparatuses, I shall call an apparatus literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings. Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, confession, factories, disciplines, judicial measures, and so forth (whose connection with power is in a certain sense evident), but also the pen, writing, literature, philosophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, computers, cellular telephones and — why not — language itself, which is perhaps the most ancient of apparatuses — one in which thousands and thousands  of years ago a primate inadvertently let himself be captured, probably without realizing the consequences that he was about to face."

References - Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes, James Corner; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispositif