lorgnette
lorgnettes
An old-fashioned type of glasses that you hold up to your eyes with a handle is called a lorgnette. You might see a lady with a lorgnette enjoying the opera in an old movie.
Lorgnettes were originally a type of jewelry, rather than functional eyeglasses. Later, they were used to enhance vision but considered more fashionable than spectacles that hooked over the ears. The disadvantage of a lorgnette is that you have to hold it up to your eyes in order to see clearly. The word comes from the French verb lorgner, "to squint," and lorgne, which means both "squinting" and also "cross-eyed or foolish."
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eyeglasses that are held to the eyes with a long handle
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type of:
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eyeglasses, glasses, specs, spectacles
optical instrument consisting of a frame that holds a pair of lenses for correcting defective vision
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eyeglasses, glasses, specs, spectacles
Vocabulary lists containing lorgnette
Ahead of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Jewish teenage boys begin to disappear from the city's streets. After his best friend goes missing, Alter must race to solve the mystery before he becomes the killer's next victim.
A borrowing from Middle French, -ette is a diminutive suffix. There are two widely used senses of this suffix: the first denotes the smallness of an object and the second refers to a woman carrying out the role of the root word.
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