continuum

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from Latin continuum, neuter form of continuus, from contineō (“contain, enclose”).

1. A continuous series or whole, no part of which is noticeably different from its adjacent parts, although the ends or extremes of it are very different from each other.

   “Near-synonym: spectrum”

   “So, the white line implies Blacklessness and the black background implies Whitelessness – that is, once the white line, a continuum, has emerged from blackness, also a continuum, and the two continua engage in an “inter-penetrative” (Buddhist term) process.”

2. A continuous extent.

   “A doorknob of whatever roundish shape is effectively a continuum of levers, with the axis of the latching mechanism—known as the spindle—being the fulcrum about which the turning takes place.”

3. The nondenumerable set of real numbers; more generally, any compact connected metric space.
4. A touch-sensitive strip, similar to an electronic standard musical keyboard, except that the note steps are ¹⁄₁₀₀ of a semitone, and so are not separately marked.