The Collaborative International Dictionary
Interstice \In*ter"stice\ (?; 277), n.; pl. Interstices. [L. interstitium a pause, interval; inter between + sistere to set, fr. stare to stand: cf. F. interstice. See Stand.]
That which intervenes between one thing and another; especially, a space between things closely set, or between the parts which compose a body; a narrow chink; a crack; a crevice; a hole; an interval; as, the interstices of a wall.
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An interval of time; specifically (R. C. Ch.), in the plural, the intervals which the canon law requires between the reception of the various degrees of orders.
Nonobservance of the interstices . . . is a sin.
--Addis & Arnold.
Wiktionary
n. (plural of interstice English)
Wikipedia
In Roman Catholicism, the interstices is a period of at least three months between the ordination of a man to the diaconate and his ordination to the priesthood. A bishop may shorten the length of this interval if he has an extraordinary reason for doing so. It is generally longer than three months.
It has been applied to many other offices as well. When rules for the progression of a candidate through church offices were first codified in the 4th and 5th centuries, for example, some bishops established a waiting period of four years as acolyte or subdeacon and five years as a deacon.
Usage examples of "interstices".
Space reverberated with the gravity-wave backwash of their wormhole interstices snapping shut behind them, impinging on the habitat’s sensitive mass-detection organs.
The blackhawks and voidhawks open interstices to travel through wormholes every time they fly between stars.
Nanonic-sized interstices flicked open, only to decay within milliseconds.
Behind the shrinking wormhole interstices, the black eggs thundered earthwards with total impunity.
Wormhole interstices were prised open, carrying some of the voidhawks to their rendezvous coordinates.
The interstices between the spikes were too narrow—one of the claws, impaled, tore off.
They left wide interstices through which stars dazzled and the wind careened.
Annath Gothallamor rang and sang, chimed in its interstices and recesses like a mighty carillon, vibrated to the resonances of power in eerie currents of the unnatural wind.
The door was of welded iron bars with no interstices more than a hand's-breadth apart.
The square shafts filling the interstices between alternate facets of the octagons were in some cases filled with conduits.
Light from the hovering globe spewed through the interstices of the armor, dappling Perennius and the walls around him.
The little chapel was in black contrast to the sky which streamed light through the open roof and past the interstices of the pillared wall.
That meteorite would have had to pass through one hell of a dense series of interstices to release enough saltwater to create a three percent mixture in a pool that deep.
If the glacier contained saltwater interstices filled with plankton, she would have seen them.
They then shoveled back sufficient earth to fill the interstices between the bodies and to come to a level with the top of the upper layer, after which loose stones were rolled in until the bodies were entirely covered by two inches of stones.