telescope
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɛl.ɪ.skəʊp/
ipa: /ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/
Forms: form: telescopes
Etymology: From tele- + -scope.
From Latin tēlescopium, from Ancient Greek τηλεσκόπος (tēleskópos, “far-seeing”), from τῆλε (têle, “afar”) + σκοπέω (skopéō, “I 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.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1831, Thomas Carlyle, “Symbols”, in Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. […], London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, 3rd book, page 155:
text: It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope.
ref: 1859 November 24, Charles Darwin, “Difficulties on Theory”, in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 188:
text: 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; […]
ref: 1880 [1610 March 13], Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, “The Astronomical Messenger”, in Edward Stafford Carlos, transl., The Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei and a Part of the Preface to Kepler's Dioptrics Containing the Original Account of Galileo's Astronomical Discoveries: A Translation with Introduction and Notes, London: Rivingtons, translation of Sidereus Nuncius: […] , →OCLC, page 10:
text: 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.
ref: 2001 November 24, Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Relativity”, in The Universe in a Nutshell, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 21:
text: 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.
ref: 2021 December 24, Don Lincoln, “The telescope that will replace Hubble will launch on Christmas. Here’s why it matters”, in CNN:
glosses: A monocular optical instrument that magnifies distant objects, especially in astronomy.
glosses: Any instrument used in astronomy for observing distant objects (such as a radio telescope).
examples: text: In some studios the telescopes are fixed to the lighting grid […]
ref: 1963, Television Engineering: Report, page 245:
topics: broadcasting
media
television
glosses: A retractable tubular support for lights.
examples: text: Chinese Telescopes are sold by some dealers for young Japanese Fringetails. For this reason it is well to select a reliable dealer when purchasing choice stock.
ref: 1928, Robert V. Sawyer, Edwin H. Perkins, Water Gardens and Goldfish (page 92)
glosses: A kind of goldfish with protruding eyes, first bred in China.
Hyponyms: Cassegrain telescope
Gregorian telescope
Keplerian telescope
optical telescope
radio telescope
reflecting telescope
refracting telescope
terrestrial telescope
X-ray telescope
Derived terms: dialytic telescope
Dobsonian telescope
Galilean telescope
liquid mirror telescope
Maksutov telescope
Nasmyth telescope
Newtonian telescope
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
Schmidt telescope
solar telescope
telescope bag
telescope house
telescope word
telescopic
telescopically
telescoping
telescopy
through the wrong end of the telescope
transit telescope
water telescope
zenith telescope