optical

Pluralopticals

1. 1
   adjective

   Relating to sight or to the sense of vision.

   An optical illusion can trick the brain into seeing motion that isn't really there.

   The brain interprets optical input from the retina to build a picture of the world.

   Similarvisual, ocular

2. 2
   adjective

   Designed to assist or improve a person's eyesight.

   The pharmacy added an optical department selling glasses and contact lenses.

   She was fitted with optical lenses designed to correct her blurry vision.

3. 3
   adjective

   Relating to optics, the branch of physics concerned with light and vision.

   The optical properties of the new glass greatly reduced glare.

   Researchers presented their work on optical phenomena at the physics conference.

4. 4
   adjective

   Relating to the visible part of the light spectrum.

   Optical telescopes gather visible light from distant galaxies.

   The satellite carries both optical and infrared cameras.

5. 5
   adjective

   Built with devices that detect or respond to light.

   An optical mouse detects motion with a tiny light sensor.

   The drive reads data from discs using an optical pickup.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A special effect created by processing the film in a laboratory rather than capturing it in the camera.

   The editor ordered an optical to dissolve smoothly between the two shots.

   Before computers, every optical had to be created by hand in a film lab.

   Note

   A film-laboratory noun, most often met in the plural. Gary Jane Hoisington's 1976 review complains of a picture's "gross, opulent opticals," treating them as part of a film's whole look. In 2006, David K. Irving and Peter W. Rea's Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video pairs "opticals and effects" and notes they can be shot on film or generated by computer and transferred to film. The word lives on wherever work still goes back to film.

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