Dictionary

multiplying glass en · NOUN

Meanings

1. A glass with a number of facets, causing an object to appear multiplied many times.
   • It may have one side, which must be convex, ground into little facets, like those of some jewels, while the other side is plain. Children know it by the name of a multiplying glass […] 1776, Oliver Goldsmith, chapter 5, in A Survey of Experimental Philosophy, volume 2, London: T. Carnan and F. Newbery, page 284:
   • 1694, N.H., The Ladies Dictionary, London: John Dunton, p. 95, […] ten to one but a Lady gets an Enemy when she refuses a Lover—who is generally so unreasonable an Animal, that he does not consider, One poor Woman can suffice at once but for one Man; whereas if a Fam’d Beauty, or Fortune, she can never content all Pretenders—unless she had as many Bodies as she has Faces when she looks in a Multiplying Glass.
   • When I look at a candle through a multiplying glass, I seem to see a dozen candles instead of one […] 1846, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, New York: Harper & Brothers, Book 4, Chapter 1, p. 384:
2. (obsolete) A magnifying glass.
   • For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, (that is their Passions and Selfe-love,) through which, every little payment appeareth a great grievance; but are destitute of those prospective glasses, (namely Morall and Civill Science,) to see a farre off the miseries that hang over them, and cannot without such payments be avoyded. 1651, Thomas Hobbes, chapter 18, in Leviathan, London: Andrew Crooke, page 94:
   • 1631, Ben Jonson, The New Inn, London: Thomas Alchorne, Act I, Scene 1, poring through a multiplying glasse, / Vpon a captiu’d crab-louse, or a cheese-mite / To be dissected, as the sports of nature, / With a neat Spanish needle
   • Will he forgive that dim sight which I have of sin now, when sins scarce appeare to be sins unto me, and will he forgive that over-quick sight, when I shall see my sins through Satans multiplying glasse of desperation, when I shall thinke them greater then his mercy, upon my death bed? a. 1631, John Donne, “Sermon preached upon Whitsunday”, in LXXX Sermons, London: Richard Royston, published 1640, page 343:

Forms

Relateds

multiplying lens

Synonyms

polyscope