bioscope
Pluralbioscopes
- 1An early form of movie projector.
The traveling showman set up his bioscope in the village hall and charged a penny a seat.
The audience gasped as the bioscope flickered to life and a train seemed to rush toward them.
Note
The name joins bio-, meaning life, to -scope, an instrument for looking, so it promises a device for watching life in motion. In this sense the word names the machine itself, not the place; the same word was also put to work for the building where films are shown, a use with its own geography.
- 2A cinema or movie theater: a building where movies are shown to an audience.
After school the boys would walk down to the bioscope to catch the matinee.
Like their Western brothers, groups of native youths [in Burma] from out-lying places set out cheerfully on Saturday nights to visit the nearest "Bioscope", as they call the cinema[.]
1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black ArtNote
A word with a map behind it: the cinema has been the bioscope in South Africa and across parts of South and Southeast Asia, from India and Pakistan to Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore. Outside South Africa it now sounds dated, but there it stays current, propped up by Afrikaans bioskoop. Rollo Ahmed's The Black Art (1936) has youths in Burma setting out on Saturday nights for the nearest Bioscope.
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Origin
Formed from bio- and -scope. Its modern use in South Africa is influenced by Afrikaans bioskoop.