Separated by a Common Language

i was told that joke once and just thought it was not very funny. I suppose it might have registered a few notches higher on the funny-meter if that was the term I was used to. Possibly. I think the term used in the telling was "guide dog". I've never heard the term "seeing eye dog" here in Britain.

I use exactly the same definitions as you, Dru.

Um, didn't we have a similar conversation on this forum a few months ago?

I use the same definitions. I am long-sighted myself. This has nothing to do with age - I've worn reading glasses since my early twenties.

I first heard of myopia when I did O level biology, but rarely hear it because the general public don't use medical terms very often.

And I use far-sighted and near-sighted just as consistently. I knew I had a problem when I had to hold the shampoo bottle between my feet to tell if it was conditioner or shampoo.(I like long-sighed and short-sighted, though! I'm surprised they never caught on here (even a little).
)

"bins" (when not used for receptacles for rubbish) is something I've heard among birdwatchers for binoculars, but the sort that are used for magnification, rather than glasses/specs.

You'll sometimes see it written with a double-n when used in this sense (ie as "binns"), for the obvious reason of avoiding confusion with the sort you put your rubbish in.

I've never heard it for glasses/spectacles.

To be fair, I have only heard it two or three times in my life, so it's not common.

I got my first pair of glasses in 1983 in North West England and they've been called "bins" more than a few times since then.

Another way to look at it is that NOUN‑ed (in one of its senses) means 'possessing NOUN'.

So sighted means 'possessing sight. Keen/sharp sighted mean 'possessing see/sharp sight'. The original meaning of short sighted was 'possessing short sight' — i.e. sight that falls short. And far sighted meant 'possessing sight that extends far'.

I was going to cite a list of analogous compounds, starting with thick-skinned. But then I realised they were all based on physical parts of the body. Smelled and touched have other meanings — which are not conducive to *keen-smelled or *sensitive-touched. And nothing seems capable of making *hearinged a plausible word. The only good analogies i can think of are like-minded, open-minded etc.

David Crosbie wrote:
"It's easy to equate the eye condition of being short sighted with the non-prophetic sense. Far sighted has always struck me as less plausible as a non-technical clinical term because it bear no relation to ability. It doesn't convey the expected meaning of 'able to see further than other people'. I prefer to say — of myself or others — I have to wear reading glasses."

I have to disagree. Normal vision should include both the ability to see far and near. Thus, saying you're near-sighted implies that you can't see far, and far-sighted implies you can't see near. In addition, short/long and near/far make, at least in AmE, good opposite pairs in a way that short/far and near/long don't. So the natural opposite of near-sighted is far-sighted.

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So the natural opposite of near-sighted is far-sighted.

Yes, but I don't say near‑sighted. It isn't in my vocabulary. I wouldn't know what it meant if it hadn't been explained to me.

I use only short‑sighted 'possessing sight which falls short'. This sense of short does not associate readily with long as its opposite. We don't say The arrow fell long or Happily, I'm long of money today. In another sense we can say This pastry is short but not That pastry is long . Even in the usual sense, the opposite of short people is tall people. (Though babies, I think, can be long.)

As a further complication near is essentially a positive word, while far is sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Short when applied to eyesight, arrow‑shots and money is negative, while long is generally neutral.

saying you're near-sighted implies that you can't see far

That would seem to be what the speaker intends, but the implication fails utterly with me. Until told otherwise, I would understand near‑sighted to denote an enhanced ability to see things that are close up.

In yet another sense, we don't say I was caught short yesterday but I escaped long today.

@David Crosbie: "I would understand near‑sighted to denote an enhanced ability to see things that are close up."

Absent presbyopia, with myopia the center of your focal range is moved toward you and you lose the ability to see things far away while gaining the ability to focus on very near things. It's my only superpower.

Far-sightedness doesn't have a corresponding advantage over normal vision, because normal vision allows one to focus to infinity. In that case you just lose the ability to focus on nearby things.

@David Crosbie: "In yet another sense, we don't say I was caught short yesterday but I escaped long today."
AmE speaker here. What does this mean?

The OED recognises only be taken short 'have an urgent need of a toilet'. The most recent quote is from a satirical magazine which also reads quirky anecdotes from the news.

1977 Private Eye 11 Nov. 10/2 Taken badly short when on his way to work, and finding that both of the public lavatories in Putney were closed, Mr. Peter Herring entered a police station and asked if he could use their convenience.

The OED lists this as sense of short as

C adv 5. (a)
To take by surprise, at a disadvantage; to come suddenly upon; esp. Naut. (of wind or bad weather), or colloq. (in passive) to have an urgent need to urinate or defecate.

...related to, among other things,

C adv
7 b.to fall short (of)
7c.to stop short of
9. to cut short
11. to sell short:


Up to the last sense, I'm sure none could form opposites with long. I don't know enough about stockmarket jargon to exclude the possibility of sell long — but I can't imagine what it would mean.

Here's a couple of long expressions, with the first certainly showing opposites:
"The long and the short of it is that he was placed under arrest."
"The wide receiver went long but the pass was thrown short." (Perfectly good American football expression)

I've heard "Caught short" in AmE but it always meant "short of cash".

And of course there is "short-term" / "long-term"

"Caught short" in BrE usually means unexpectedly needing to use the loo and there not being anywhere to go..... "He was caught short, so went behind the nearest bush".

I think the technical term for this condition is presbyopia, or old-sight(edness?). It results from reduced ability of the muscles which control focus to accomodate, something which usually sets in in late middle age. Being quite short-sighted, I have to wear glasses to get about generally outside but can read comfortably without. At a computer screen, I'm too far away to see distinctly but the old sight means I can't use my normal glasses, so I have (less powerful lenses in) my "computer glasses", e.g. to write this.

It would be great if "old-sighted" was used figuratively for "wise", but I've never heard that.

I was prescribed reading glasses at the age of 12, and when I heard that the medical term for long-sightedness meant old sight, I was both amused and confused.

I keep my reading glasses in a 'spec case'. At least, until I left them behind in Canada last month. I had to describe the potential cargo on the FedEx website ... eventually found them under 'glasses (eyewear)' ... but it was far too expensive to pay for them to be shipped back to me in the UK, so I will go to the opticians and have an eye test when the current prescription expires, as I can just about struggle on with my varifocals till then.
I was always long-sighted as a teenager, then didn't need glasses for twenty years, until I called in the engineer because the computer screen seemed fuzzy. Now I have long sight and age-related lack of accommodation. Varifocals are a great invention!

I call them (AmE) progressive trifocals (kind without lines). Love 'em (they will drive you crazy until you get used to them, though).

BrE native here. I've heard specs both ways and I'd expect context to give me the meaning. As I child I certainly heard and, although I don't remember it, may have tormented glasses wearing children with comments like "Speccy four-eyes" but I don't think I'd use specs or even spectacles for eye-wear these days, of the vision corrective or sunglasses variety. I have been known to use specs as an abbreviation for spectacles, as recently as a yesterday in fact.

As I've suggested in my previous post, we could use spectacles or eyeglasses. But we'd probably use glasses and something else (an extra phrase or whatever) to clarify completely, if required, or at least I would. Eyeglasses is something I have heard but really only used in replies to this blog post. Spectacles I've probably used, but not since childhood.

And honestly I'm struggling to construct sentences and scenarios where it's genuinely ambiguous. I guess it might be if I worked in a glass factory.

I think that if I was in a strange house and asking the host for a drink, I'd say, "Where do you keep your drinking glasses?" if there was a chance of ambiguity.

And knowing my friends, if I did just ask, "Where are your glasses?" when I wanted to prepare a drink, they'd invariably say, "Resting on my nose."

I have friends who might do that, except they know I'd ask them how much wine they hold... but they have a level of pedantry in other cases that would rival yours. But yes, I might distinguish drinking glasses, wine glasses, whisky tumblers and the like rather than spectacles.

Actually, I don't think there are exceedingly few contexts where glasses could be ambiguous — and virtually none where that ambiguity would be of any consequence.

Eloise's suggestion of a glass factory strikes me as a context in which you would not normally dream of speaking of your spectacles. If you did, it would be such an extraordinary situation that you'd supply the context e.g. glasses for protection or glasses to read the fine print.

In Paul's example, the ambiguity lies not in the war glasses but in the word your. The natural and unambiguous question to ask is Where do you keep the glasses?

In the very unlikely event that you say my glasses meaning 'my drinking glasses' the hearer might experience a few seconds of confusion, but the context and/or the continuation of the conversation will almost always remove it. And in the end, it's open to the hearer to ask for clarification.

OK, the hearer might be stuck if you were to say I bought some glasses yesterday. But conversations don't just end like that. Either the speaker will add a comment or the hearer will ask a question and the ambiguity evaporates.

The OED entry for eyeglass remarks

Chiefly N. Amer. in later use

It seems we Brits used to say eyeglass, but a century or more ago we all decided that the word just wasn't needed.

That said, I have a vague memory of British speakers using the singular eyeglass to refer to the sort of lens-in-a-cup used by jewellers and others. Not the same thing as a monocle, which lacks the cup feature that blocks out intrusive light and background image.

CORRECTION

I don't think there are exceedingly few contexts

Oh but I do. I didn't spot that I hadn't deleted don't. Sorry!

We might have used eyeglass in the singular, I'd call it a loupe, possibly a jeweller's loupe (I guess because it's a homophone? Maybe monocles were commonly called loops or loupes as well?).

I still don't think that ‑sighted is all that metaphorical. To see into the future is not to 'think about the future'. it's a slightly extended use of see/sight but it still denotes perception. Not objective perception, of course, what you believe you see in the future may actually come to pass. (Or not.)

View is, I suggest, slightly different in that it refers to where you direct your future-gazing sight.So

• farsighted (for me) means 'successful at predicting the future' — usually just some aspect of the future

• taking the long view means 'investigating something in the context of a long time frame'. This may mean 'considering the future' but it can also mean 'considering the past'.

A radio programme here called The Long View has the format of examining some event/situation inn history which is analogous to a present-day concern. Recent programmes focussed on
the Victorian beard craze of the 1850's
The 1883 grass-roots political movement called The Primrose League
(analogous to the recent surge of support for Jeremy Corbyn)
The 1905 firs in a Glasgow lodging house (analogous to the recent Grenfell Tower disaster)

Whether applied to future or past or both the long view is considered a good thing. We don't say He was criticised for taking the long view. But we can say He was criticised for being short-sighted in the years before the tragedy.

Bifocals (my mother wears them) have a sharp division between the glass areas for the reading and distance prescriptions, whereas the varifocal lenses, which may be very complex, grade into different areas and so no division can be seen by the observer. The wearer may find them difficult at first - lines of text or music seem to curve alarmingly, for example - but after a week or so the eye-brain combination has adjusted.

Having been prescribed varifocals for the first time this year, I can say that they are not quite the same as bifocals. With bifocals, the lenses are divided into two, horizontally, with the top half a diverging lens for distance viewing and the bottom a converging lens for close work. Varifocals, the lenses are shaped so that the focal length varies continuously from top to bottom. So, the very bottom of the lens brings objects very close - about 20cm - into focus, slightly higher up the lens I can see objects slightly further away, and so on up to the top of the lens for distance vision. This means you have to tilt you head the right amount for whatever you are looking at, but it does mean I can see clearly at all distances.

Biochmeist: Indeed. When I first put on my new glasses in the opticians, they gave me a card to read and as I moved my head, the card changed shape from a rectangle to a skewed parallelogram. And when I walked out of the shop, it felt as if the ground was further away and my legs weren't long enough to reach it.

We have this technology in the US, too, and we call it "progressive lenses," but it seems unnatural to me to use that term too colloquially. "My progressive lenses" wouldn't map in just any place someone could say "my glasses" or "my bifocals."

Valor: I find it very interesting how you don't (or at least I don't) notice the words and concepts that people *don't* use.

The presence of unfamiliar words stands out, but I'd never noticed that people in the US don't talk about their varifocals, any more than I noticed that they don't use fortnights, or celebrate Boxing Day, until it was pointed out to me.

I'd never heard the term varifocals either. The familiar terms for me (CanE) would be either progressive lenses or multifocals.

Like Joel mentioned above, I wouldn't use either term as a stand-in for "glasses" unless it was important to note the type for context (e.g. "My multifocals were hard to adjust to at first", but not "Wow, I like your new multifocals frames").

Bifocals and trifocals are used as previous commenters have described, though I find "trifocals" rare -- whether it's the word or the actual product that is less common, I couldn't say.

Laura, Joel

We only talk about my varifocals

• if we're distinguishing them from our previous pair

• if we have another pair which are not varifocal

So I might say my varifocals, not my reading glasses (although what i actually say is my supermarket glasses). But my wife can only say my specs (or my glasses) even though they are varifocals.

All British manufacturers, optometrists, retailers etc distinguish between varifocal and bifocal so we users make the same distinction

I'm finding singular/plural clues interesting here, in that I've known "varifocal" much longer as a term for a photographic lens with a continuously variable focal length than as a synonym for progressive-lens eyeglasses/spectacles, but from the first time I saw "varifocals", plural, I parsed it as eyewear (without even noticing it was a different word than I'm used to hearing for that until the next time I encountered "progressives lenses").

If I may "think aloud" for a bit...

I also note that if someone refers to looking rather than drinking, and mentions using "a glass", I think mirror (looking glass) or telescope (spyglass), rather than monocle. Though this may have more to do with reading rather old stories than with my idiolect or dialect (nominally central-Maryland AmE, but influenced enough by exposure to other dialects, accents, and historical periods that I do not sound like my own siblings.) I have been thinking of getting prescription monocles because I am myopic in one eye, hyperopic in the other, and presbyopic in both -- I only need one lens at a time for most distances, but a different lens before a different eye at different times.

In an unfamiliar house, looking for drinking vessels, I would probably ask, "where do you keep your glasses," instead of, "where are your glasses". It might occur to me to say "drinking glasses" if I'd noticed the person I was speaking to wore specs. Protective eyewear (i.e. not mainly sunglasses or correctives) are always "safety glasses" or "goggles". I could see a birder referring to binoculars as "glasses" but I would expect to hear "binocs" instead. Referring to "opera glasses" simply as "glasses" would confuse me for a while. Hmm. I think I would understand someone who said, "let's look at this through the glass," when referring to a jeweler's loupe or a photographer's loupe, but I think I would always say "loupe" myself. (The remaining "glass" that comes to mind in a somewhat related context is the ground glass at the focal plane of a view camera, for focussing before the film and dark-slide are inserted. For that I think I would say "on the glass" or "with the glass", never "through".)

I remember being confused by "looking glass" (which in my dialect is nearly always "mirror" unless making a literary reference ) as a child, because "glasses" were also looked-through; somehow learning "spyglass" and "watch glass", and hearing "glasses" expanded to "eyeglasses", kinda sorted it out in my head, though intuitively rather than logically.

My grandparents and some of my aunts (from Northern Virginia) referred to "spectacles" or "specs"; my parents said "specs" or "glasses", and my peers all said "glasses", but I would expect a local-dialect speaker to still immediately understand "spectacles" or "specs" even though I wouldn't expect to hear them say anything other than "glasses" or occasionally "eyeglasses".

[*] IFF it can change focal length while retaining the same focus, rather than having to be refocused after changing the focal length / magnification, then it is a "zoom" lens.

I doubt that the majority of Americans are at all familiar with the the terms fortnight or Boxing Day especially if they have no experience with, or interest in, British English. We say two weeks and December 26th.

No, as far as I can see, varifocals/progressive lenses are not the same as bifocals/trifocals. Indeed, the Wikipedia article on trifocals say they "are becoming rarer as more people choose to wear progressive lenses".

Bifocals have two focal lengths, trifocals three. Varifocals are just that, the focal length changes continuously from top to bottom.

As somebody who did a course in optics as part of a physics degree at university over forty years ago, I'd love to know more about how the lenses are designed, but googling I find only companies advertising their lenses. The Wikipedia article on progressive lenses gives no technical information, either.

I did find this explanation on a site selling glasses:

http://www.glasses2you.co.uk/glasses/varifocal-information

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Interesting that Paul's explanation makes frequent use of the word progressive. Everything points to this being the precise US equivalent of varifocal . And yet Americans — or at least the AmE posters on Lynne's blog — don't seem to be familiar with the term progressive lens.

The difference seems to be one of consumer choice. Here the spectacles and contact lenses business routinely presents the customer with a three-way offer: simple or bifocal or varifocal. At the same time they routinely offer a simple explanation of the differences between the three and the advantages and difficulties of various choices.

The way the business works here, there's competition only when you choose who to got to — we generally use the imprecise term optician. Once you've chosen to go to a particular shop, it's almost always the case that they test you eyes and make a prescription — and you then buy glasses from them. It's not unknown for an optometrist to conduct an eye test and not be attached to a retailer, but this is not typical.

Is there something different in the way Americans buy glasses? Do you just buy whatever lens the optometrist recommends? Or are progressive lenses considered too expensive, or too new-fangled, or too difficult to get used to? Or is it just that the people posting here have not had to buy glasses recently?

Well, not my explanation, but the one from glasses2you that I found. :-) And they do seem to be a British company.

I don't recall being given a choice when I got my new glasses in March, more a strong recommendation that I get varifocals. I needed little persuasion. I tend to do the crossword whilst watching TV and I had long got into the habit of peering over the tops of my spectacles so that the TV was in focus.

A "No-Line Bifocal" lens does not have just two distinct areas of focus, though I can't say whether it's identical to what you're referring to as "varifocal". In a no-line bifocal, the top of the lens is one prescription, the bottom is a second prescription, and there is an area in between where the lens transitions smoothly from one prescription to the other. Which is to say that there is no discontinuity in magnification.

What I can't say is whether what you refer to as "varifocal" will have wider areas of the end prescriptions (graph of magnification vs. height on the lens would be S-shaped) or a consistent change with position (graph would be a slanted line).

As to how it works to buy lenses in the US: Go to an optician or ophthalmologist to get your eyes tested and receive a prescription for corrective lenses. Then go to an optometrist (who might be an online business these days) to pick out frames and order the lenses. At the optometrist you can specify lens material (glass or high-refractive-index polycarbonate, typically) and, if you have presbyopia, specify lined or no-line bifocal or trifocal lenses.

As a note, my doc gave me a scrip for glasses for computer use that does not correct for distant vision, because I mentioned that I was having to tilt my head back further than I would prefer when sitting at my desk.

I've seen several US websites that seem to use the terms "no-line bifocals" and "progressive lenses" as synonyms, which makes me wonder that, if progressive lenses are marketed here in the US as a fancy kind of bifocals, maybe people just think of them still as bifocals instead of as a different thing.

I'm too young to need reading classes, so I cannot give personal experience, but I know both of my parents have progressive lenses. My dad had trifocals, I think, back in the day (he's a minister and needed the third, intermediate magnification for reading his sermons), but my mom only needed to get reading glasses much more recently, and I think she's only ever had progressives.

Doug Sundseth: I do think you’ve got the US terms mixed up.
An ophthalmologist is a medical doctor (M.D.). They can perform eye exams, diagnose and treat eye disease, write prescriptions for medication and for corrective lenses, and perform simple and complicated eye surgery.
Optometrists earn a Doctorate of Optometry (D.O.) and can do many of the same things as an ophthalmologist but they have less training and usually do not perform complicated surgery but many are licensed to perform LASIK. The difference is similar to an Oral Surgeon and a Dentist.
An optician is not a medical doctor but rather is a technician who is trained to use the prescription written by the ophthalmologist or optometrist to order the lenses and to select and fit glasses. They do not write prescriptions nor diagnose or treat vision problems or eye disease. I go to a somewhat high-end optician because I like their huge selection. They call themselves Optical Stylists, a term I see more and more.
This is how it works for me in the US: I have an annual eye exam with my optometrist. If my vision has changed enough she writes a prescription for new lenses. I wear progressive lenses which simply means they allow multiple vision fields (distance and intermediate and reading) to be incorporated into a single seamless lens. I can take that prescription to any optician to have new lenses made and they can either order new lenses for my current frames or help me select new frames from the more than 1,000 on display. It can be overwhelming with so many to choose from so I trust my experienced optical stylist to select a style, shape and color that suits me best. She makes all the necessary adjustments and fine tuning to make the glasses fit properly and comfortably.
I have never heard the term varifocal. When I refer to my glasses I simply call them my glasses. It would seem very odd to call them my progressives, or my progressive lenses. They’re just my glasses.

@Jane Elizabeth: You're absolutely correct and I know better but mixed the terms. Sorry for the confusion.

Whereas in the UK, the optometrist who tests your eyes will work for or even own the store that sells you your glasses.

The larger stores will often also employ dispensing opticians, who are qualified to dispense children's glasses and various other tasks that would otherwise need an optometrist's approval. You don't need formal qualifications to recommend and fit glasses for adults to an existing prescription, though it's normally done in a store where there are qualified staff present.

It's perfectly permissible to have your eyes tested at one store and buy your glasses somewhere else, but most people don't.

(US, Mid-Atlantic) Since I became certified presbyopic I've been wearing "graduated lenses". Viewing the world through progressive lenses has a whole nother ring to it.

In the US, we also say astigmatism. As far as I know, there's no non-medical-sounding word for that condition.

Also, we call those light-sensitive glasses "transitions" or "transition lenses" after the main brand that makes them here.

Presbyopis is just the age-related kind, caused by the muscles losing tone, as I understand it.

...but I understood wrong. Loss of elasticity in the lens, the interwebs tell me.

Thanks, Lynne.

Joel, they are Transitions here (although Other Brands Are Available, as they say on television!).