lens

The lenses in bifocals bend light, distorting the appearance of the background.

Meanings

Noun

  • An object, usually made of glass, that focuses or defocuses the light that passes through it.
  • A device which focuses or defocuses electron beams.
  • A convex shape bounded by two circular arcs, joined at their endpoints, the corresponding concave shape being a lune.
  • A genus of the legume family; its bean.
  • The transparent crystalline structure in the eye.
  • A body of rock, ice, or water shaped like a convex lens.
  • A construct used in statically-typed functional programming languages to access nested data structures.
  • A way of looking, literally or figuratively, at something.

Verb

  • To film, shoot.
  • To become thinner towards the edges.

Origin

  • Borrowed from Latin lēns, in Medieval Latin later taking on the sense of "lens".

Modern English dictionary

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