lens

Meaning

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

crystalline lens

electron lens

lens system

lense

lenticle

lens of the eye

single eyeglass

glass block

object-glass

lentil plant

optical lens

acoustic lens

magnetic lens

sound lens

electronic lens

ophthalmic lens

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/lɛnz/

Borrowed from Latin lēns (“lentil”), with Medieval Latin later taking on the sense of “lens”, a semantic loan from Arabic عَدْسَة (ʕadsa, “lentil; optic lens”).

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