Interstitial

Research

Occupying or relating to the small gaps between things; in social science, interstitial spaces — between institutions, disciplines, or identities — are often sites of innovation that established categories do not easily capture.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — interstitial merriam-webster.com accessed 17 September 2026

Merriam-Webster: “Occurring in or being an interval or intervening space or segment: of, relating to, or forming an interstice.” The dictionary also records the anatomical sense — tissue “situated within but not restricted to or characteristic of a particular organ or tissue” — and a crystallographic one, where small atoms occupy spaces in a lattice. First recorded 1646. The social-science usage above is a metaphorical extension of the general sense, and the technical senses are worth knowing so they are not mistaken for it when they appear in a search.

Merriam-Webster is cited here as the dictionary of record. Where a lexicon entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it — there is no other body with standing over what a word means. The reading of how the term is used in research writing, above, is this lexicon’s own.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

Rewritten from a truncated AJG archive entry, August 2026.