I am looking for an adjective to describe a surface that feels to the touch like a very fine sandpaper, a bit rougher than the surface of a MacBook laptop, or like the paper used for mass paperback books. When you glide your hand on it it feels both smooth and sandpapery, velvety sandpaper.
Example:
The very fine sandpapery cover of the book.
The very fine sandpapery surface of the wall.
would be replaced by the adjective:
The [adjective] cover of the book.
The [adjective] surface of the wall.
try the word, shagreened:
noun 1. an untanned leather with a granular surface, prepared from the hide of a horse, shark, seal, etc. 2. the rough skin of certain sharks, used as an abrasive. adjective 3. Also, shagreened. resembling, covered with, or made of shagreen.
finely textured
slightly textured
textured
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/textured
texture [teks-cher]
1. the visual and especially tactile quality of a surface: rough texture.
2.
7. a rough or grainy surface quality.
the slightly textured cover of the book
the textured cover of the book
the finely textured surface of the wall
What you're looking for is a term which many fountain pen lovers are familiar with; namely, micro-abrasive.
Micro-abrasives are commonly bonded to Mylar (a trademark for a thin, strong polyester film) sheets which can be used for--among other things--smoothing the nib of a fountain pen. The nib, by the way, is the part of a fountain pen which contacts the pen while writing, and it's commonly made of a blob of iridium which has been welded to the tip of the nib. I've done a good bit of nib smoothing in the last year or so.
The finest grit of micro-abrasive I've worked with is .3 μm. A micrometer (Br. micrometre) equals 1×10 [to the negative sixth power] of a metre (SI standard prefix "micro-" = 10); that is, one millionth of a metre (or one thousandth of a millimetre, 0.001 mm, or about 0.000039 inch).
Rubbing one's finger over .3 μm micro-abrasive gives the sensation of rubbing one's finger over a high quality paper! The process of nib smoothing starts usually with a "rougher" micro-abrasive (e.g., 5 μm) and then proceeds to 3 μm, then 1 μm, and finally .3 μm.
Aphanitic (Greek αφανης, invisible), from geology, refers to igneous rocks whose mineral crystals are not visible to the naked eye. In the same vein, soil textures include silty, which also suggests and evokes silky.
Sources:
How about granular?
OD:
granular: having a roughened surface or structure.
Your examples:
The granular cover of the book.
The granular surface of the wall.
Another possibility is matte. From Wikipedia:
In paint technology, the sheen is the glossiness of a paint finish. Glossy and flat (or matte) are typical extreme levels of glossiness of a finish. Glossy paints are shiny and reflect most light in the specular (mirror-like) direction, while on flat paints most of the light diffuses in a range of angles. The gloss level of paint can also affect its apparent colour. [emphasis added]
Between those extremes, there are a number of intermediate gloss levels. Their common names, from the most dull to the most shiny, include: matte, eggshell, satin, silk, semi-gloss and high gloss. These terms are not standardized, and not all manufacturers use all these terms.
The sheen or gloss level of a paint is principally determined by the ratio of resinous, adhesive binder which solidifies after drying, and solid, powdery pigment. The more binder the coating contains, the more regular reflection will be made from its smooth surface; conversely, with less binder, grains of pigment become exposed to the surface, scattering the light and providing matte effect.
The main idea here is that matte finishes are rougher than glossy finishes, which is why they reflect light non-specularly and feel slightly rougher than glossy finishes.
Your examples:
The matte cover of the book.
The matte surface of the wall.
I will offer two words that people will understand without having to look them up, in case you want to consider something in that category.
- having a coarse or uneven surface, as from projections, irregularities, or breaks; not smooth
dictionary.com
Here's how I arrived at this word. There is a word in Spanish that fits your description perfectly: áspero. Which can be expressed in English as rough. I would use either of these words to describe a cat's tongue, and how it feels when a cat licks your hand in a grooming fest.
Gritty things have a rough texture that makes them feel like they're coated with sand. After a day at the beach, you might come home with gritty arms and legs.
A baking project involving corn meal might result in a gritty counter and a gritty kitchen floor, and one shake of your dirty dog will leave you with a gritty couch. Grit is a tiny particle of sand or stone, and gritty means "covered in grit."
vocabulary.com
So, your sentences:
The gritty cover of the book.
The rough surface of the wall.
Funny, that these words have been danced around on this page, but not proposed as answers yet....
Though not a simple adjective and admittedly somewhat technical looking the grit size terminology (see Wikipedia) can perhaps be applied. It is will let you describe the surface's roughness quantitatively and precisely .
The surface of the wall felt like P120 sandpaper.
Or even ...
The surface of the wall had a ISO/FEPA Grit designation of P120.
The surface of the wall had an average particle diameter of 125 µm.
The Complete Guide to Sandpaper Grit Classification expresses the different textures of sandpapers after breaking it down into two categories: Macro grit and micro grit.
Macro grits can be expressed as: extra course, course, medium, fine, very fine, whereas micro grits can be described as: very fine, extra fine, ultra fine and super fine.
A material equivalent to sand paper, with finer grain, is called Emery cloth, tape or paper. Emery (corundite, aluminium oxide) is named from Cape Emeri (Naxos, Greek Island), where it was discovered.
From my past experience with model making, I know that emery paper was used after coarse and then fine sand paper, because of its finer finishing properties.
My offering comes from the world of art, pastel painting in particular:
toothy
A pastel artist's work surface or 'ground' generally may be one of two types: a coarse paper, or a paper which has a granular layer adhered to its surface to make it gritty, exactly like sandpaper. In either case, the coarseness / grittiness of the paper's hand, that is, its toothiness, is necessary to grab and hold the pastel pigment, which is in a dry form and would fall off a smooth surface. My pastel artist husband might refer to a ground as having "a toothy response to the pigment", or as having "a fine tooth." The degree of a paper's toothiness is also a consideration for graphite, charcoal, and other dry mediums.
So, if you are looking for a word which connotes a fine, velvety roughness, toothy might just fit.
References:
A pastel artist's description of pastel papers
An artists' forum on the nuances of 'tooth' versus 'texture'.
The SPI (Society of Plastic Industry) has several classes of polish. The grade between A: Diamond Buff Polish and C: Stone Polish is called B: Paper Polish and is equivalent to 600 to 320 grit paper.
From this guide:
NON-GLOSSY SURFACE, PAPER POLISH
SPI Finish B-1 — 600 Grit Paper
SPI Finish B-2 — 400 Grit Paper
SPI Finish B-3 — 320 Grit Paper
1. having, reduced to, consisting of, or bearing grain or grains (usually used in combination): fine-grained sand; large-grained rice.
2. having a granular form, structure, or surface: wood and other grained materials.
3. having an artificially produced granular texture or pattern: grained kid.
(dictionary.com)
The same entry provides some historical examples:
After five minutes the wood is washed, and grained with acetate of iron (the ordinary iron liquor of the dyer) at 20° Tw. Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 Barkham Burroughs
grained letter-paper—gilt-edged—with a favorite perfume in it. The Ghost William. D. O'Connor
A grained morocco surface is given to the material by passing it between suitably embossed rollers. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 3
The wikipedia entry about Moroccan leather says:
The traditional tanning process was skilled and elaborate; according to the application, the preparation either would aim for a carefully smoothed finish, or would bring up the grain in various patterns such as straight-grained, pebble-grained, or in particular, in a bird's-eye pattern.
I got the idea of looking up "grained" by thinking about books bound in leather, with descriptions talking about them being fine grained.
lineny
or
linen-textured
The feel of linen is described on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen
A good description for anything that feels ‘like the paper used for mass paperback books; both smooth and sandpapery, velvety sandpaper’ might be ‘papery’.
I haven’t seen a MacBook for many a month but last time I looked almost anything was ‘a bit rougher than the surface of a MacBook laptop…’
