the.com/eyeglass
A lens you wear so the world agrees to hold still.
means A lens (or pair of lenses, worn over the eyes) that corrects or sharpens vision.
from Simple compound: 'eye' plus 'glass,' glass being the old general word for anything made of ground, transparent material—mirrors, windows, lenses. Spectacle-lenses go back to 13th-century Italy, but English didn't bother coining a fancy word for them; it just said eye-glass, plainly describing the glass you put before your eye. The single-lens monocle version later borrowed its name from Latin 'monoculus' (one-eyed), but 'eyeglass' itself has always been the no-nonsense, literal cousin in the spectacles family.
- first made
- 13th century Italy, by monks squinting at manuscripts
- benjamin franklin
- invented bifocals to stop swapping two pairs
- why frames exist
- glass alone cannot cling to a nose
- roman clue
- nero reportedly watched gladiators through a polished emerald