the.com/spongy pore
The skin's tiny breathing holes, conveniently doubling as a personal oil refinery you never asked for.
means A pore is one of the tiny openings in your skin through which sweat and oil pass, with 'spongy' describing the soft, absorbent, fuller-pored texture of skin that drinks in moisture and breathes through these gaps.
from 'Pore' arrives via Latin 'porus' from Greek 'poros' — a passage, a way through, the same root that gives us 'emporium' (a place you pass through to trade). 'Spongy' descends from Greek 'spongos,' the sea sponge itself, that creature so riddled with holes it became the very word for anything soft and full of cavities. Put together, 'spongy pore' is a doubling-up of the same idea from two ancient tongues: holes upon holes, passages within a soft thing.
- sebum factory
- Each one pumps oil to keep skin waterproof
- no muscles
- Pores can't actually open or close themselves
- count
- Faces carry roughly 20,000 of them
- size illusion
- Heat and grime just make them look bigger
- blackhead truth
- Dark dots are oxidized oil, not dirt