subtend

Because all stars are so far away, the light that reaches Earth from each of them and falls on your retina subtends an area smaller than that of a single photoreceptor.

What sump of literal-mindedness must subtend a sensibility so obtuse as to miss the fact, even on the first page of this essay about the curdling of nineteen-sixties counterculture, that the telling doesn’t work?

The critical central retina subtends an area of visual space of about 1 square degree of visual angle.

The most indecent fake is the one Evans proclaimed “Our Lady of the Sports,” an ivory statue whose bare breasts are subtended by a gold bustier, and whose hips are framed with a gender-blurring codpiece.

Emerging from a half-moon-shaped spathe, two bright blue petals are subtended by a nearly transparent, milky white smaller petal.