telescope
/ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.75 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A monocular optical instrument that magnifies distant objects, especially in astronomy.
noun
Any instrument used in astronomy for observing distant objects (such as a radio telescope).
noun
A retractable tubular support for lights.
verb
To extend or contract in the manner of a telescope.
verb
To slide or pass one within another, after the manner of the sections of a small telescope or spyglass.
verb
To come into collision, as railway cars, in such a manner that one runs into another.
Intransitive verb
verb
To collapse, via cancellation.
Example Sentences
- "It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it was a Sun."
- "It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope."
- "About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a Dutchman had constructed a telescope, by the aid of which visible objects, although at a great distance from the eye of the observer, were seen distinctly as if near; […]"
- "This was one of the great missed opportunities of theoretical physics. If Einstein had stuck with his original equations, he could have predicted that the universe must be either expanding or contracting. As it was, the possibility of a time-dependent universe wasn't taken seriously until observations in the 1920s by the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson."
- "The 1.2-meter-diameter (4-foot-diameter) telescope has set off on a monthlong journey to its orbital destination of the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, which is nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away from Earth and also home to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Euclid will keep pace with Earth as our planet orbits the sun."
- "In some studios the telescopes are fixed to the lighting grid […]"
Etymology
From tele- + -scope. From Latin tēlescopium, from Ancient Greek τηλεσκόπος (tēleskópos, “far-seeing”), from τῆλε (têle, “afar”) + σκοπέω (skopéō, “to look at”). Coined in 1611 by the Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani for one of Galileo Galilei's instruments presented at a banquet at the Accademia dei Lincei. Doublet of Telescopium.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/
- British English: /ˈtɛl.ɪ.skəʊp/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Astronomy.