Optics

How to spell optics

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce optics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does optics mean?

1. nounThe branch of physics concerned with light, vision, and the behaviour of lenses and mirrors.
2. nounThe way a situation, decision, or action appears to the public, regardless of its substance.

Optics in a sentence

• The engineering course devotes a full term to optics and laser design.

• The board worried about the optics of awarding bonuses during layoffs.

• Advances in fibre optics transformed how data travels across continents.

• The minister cancelled the trip because the optics were terrible.

Where does optics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word descends from the Greek optikos, meaning 'relating to sight' or 'of seeing', which was built on optos, 'seen', and ultimately on ops, the Greek word for 'eye'. Medieval scholars Latinised this into optica to name the science of light and vision, and English picked it up in the early seventeenth century as 'optics', following the established pattern of treating a field of study as a plural noun, much like 'physics' and 'mathematics'. The same ops root for 'eye' surfaces in a surprising range of relatives, from 'optical' and 'optician' to 'synopsis' (a seeing together) and even 'autopsy' (a seeing for oneself). For most of its life the word stayed firmly scientific, describing lenses, mirrors and light, but in late twentieth-century political and business writing it gained a vivid figurative sense: the 'optics' of a situation, meaning how it looks to onlookers. The spelling stays comfortingly regular, with the hard c plus s ending mirroring its Greek ancestor.

How the word is built

• opt- (from Greek optikos: relating to sight)
• -ic (adjective-forming)
• -s (forming a noun of a field or a plural)