microscope

From New Latin microscopium and Italian microscopio, from Ancient Greek μικρός (mikrós, “small”) + σκοπέω (skopéō, “I look at”), equivalent to micro- +‎ -scope.

• enPR: mīʹkrə-skōp'
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmaɪ.kɹəˌskəʊp/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmaɪ.kɹəˌskoʊp/

  • Audio (Mid-Atlantic US):

    (file)

• Hyphenation: mi‧cro‧scope

microscope (plural microscopes)

1. An optical instrument used for observing small objects.
   • 1837, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, volume 23, page 222:

     That he might ascertain whether any of the cloths of ancient Egypt were made of hemp, M. Dutrochet has examined with the microscope the weavable filaments of this last vegetable.

   • 1978, Jan Romein, The Watershed of Two Eras: Europe in 1900, page 303:

     Elsewhere, professionals could enthuse over new precision instruments capable, for instance, of measuring weights down to a tenth of a milligram, or over a host of self-registering thermometers and barometers, microscopes, typewriters, calculators and all sorts of technical and musical devices, including automatic concertinas, edeophones, auto-harps, bigophones and other long-forgotten objects.

2. Any instrument for imaging very small objects (such as an electron microscope).

• magnifying glass
• telescope

microscope (third-person singular simple present microscopes, present participle microscoping, simple past and past participle microscoped)

1. To examine with a microscope, to put under a microscope (literally or figuratively).

   Synonym: microscopize

   • 1897, The Clinical Journal, page 200:

     It has a strong germicidal action, as can be verified by staining and microscoping the pus, the characteristic micro-organisms disappearing rapidly under its use.

   • 2012, E.J. Zingg, D.M.A. Wallace, Bladder Cancer, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 79:

     Wright (1959), using the standard and less laborious technique of microscoping the centrifuged deposit of a sample of urine, found that 21.6% of males attending life insurance examinations had more than 10 red blood cells per high power field (rbc/hpf).

From micro- +‎ -scope.

• IPA^(key): /mi.kʁɔs.kɔp/

• Audio (Lyon):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔp

microscope m (plural microscopes)

1. microscope

• microscopie
• microscopique

• “microscope”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.