Myopia
/maɪˈoʊpiə/noun
Short-sightedness: distant objects blur because the eye focuses light in front of the retina.
The Greek roots
Literally: “shut-eye”
The story of the word
μύωψ described someone who screws the eyes half shut in order to see, from μύω, to close, and ὤψ, eye, so the name records the squint rather than the blur. The same verb lies under mystery and mystic, an initiate being one who kept lips and eyes shut. Medical Latin took myopia in the 1720s. Rates have climbed steeply in East Asian cities, where studies put over 80 percent of school leavers short-sighted, and time spent outdoors in childhood is the strongest protective factor found so far.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1720s
Same family
In a sentence
Her myopia was picked up when she started copying the board wrong.
Quarterly targets breed a myopia that costs more than it saves.