lorgnette

[lawrn-yet]

noun

1. a pair of eyeglasses mounted on a handle.

2. a pair of opera glasses mounted on a handle.

lorgnette

/ lɔːˈnjɛt /

noun

1. a pair of spectacles or opera glasses mounted on a handle

Word History and Origins

Origin of lorgnette¹

1795–1805; < French, derivative of lorgner to eye furtively; -ette

Word History and Origins

Origin of lorgnette¹

C19: from French, from lorgner to squint, from Old French lorgne squinting

Example Sentences

He held a pair of tortoiseshell lorgnette glasses to his eyes, to get a better look at the flames climbing the building’s walls.

Read more on Literature

A lyrical aesthete and a Flaubertian prose polisher, he is pictured, in “Lucky Per,” as the sickly poet Enevoldsen, fussing with his lorgnette at a Copenhagen café while worrying about “where to put a comma.”

Read more on The New Yorker

One hand carried a gigantic bag, the kind that holds passports, engagement diaries, and bridge scores, while the other hand toyed with that inevitable lorgnette, the enemy to other people’s privacy.

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And, like a Brontë sister in a box at the opera, Perry observes the drama from an omniscient perch, examining her characters as if through a lorgnette.

Read more on New York Times

People lost things then that we don’t lose now, simply because we don’t use them: lorgnettes, pince-nez spectacles, chatelaine bags, fox tails, feather boas, auto starter cranks, pocket watches, watch fobs, watch keys .

Read more on Washington Post

Related Words

• specs 
• sunglasses