multiplying glass

English

Noun

multiplying glass (plural multiplying glasses)

1. A glass with a number of facets, causing an object to appear multiplied many times.
   • 1694, N.H., The Ladies Dictionary, London: John Dunton, p. 95,^[1]

     […] ten to one but a Lady gets an Enemy when she refuses a Lover—who is generally so unreasonable an Animal, that he does not consider, One poor Woman can suffice at once but for one Man; whereas if a Fam’d Beauty, or Fortune, she can never content all Pretenders—unless she had as many Bodies as she has Faces when she looks in a Multiplying Glass.

   • 1776, Oliver Goldsmith, chapter 5, in A Survey of Experimental Philosophy‎^[2], volume 2, London: T. Carnan and F. Newbery, page 284:

     It may have one side, which must be convex, ground into little facets, like those of some jewels, while the other side is plain. Children know it by the name of a multiplying glass […]

   • 1846, John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic‎^[3], New York: Harper & Brothers, Book 4, Chapter 1, p. 384:

     When I look at a candle through a multiplying glass, I seem to see a dozen candles instead of one […]

2. (obsolete) A magnifying glass.
   • a. 1631, John Donne, “Sermon preached upon Whitsunday”, in LXXX Sermons‎^[4], London: Richard Royston, published 1640, page 343:

     Will he forgive that dim sight which I have of sin now, when sins scarce appeare to be sins unto me, and will he forgive that over-quick sight, when I shall see my sins through Satans multiplying glasse of desperation, when I shall thinke them greater then his mercy, upon my death bed?

   • 1631, Ben Jonson, The New Inn, London: Thomas Alchorne, Act I, Scene 1,^[5]

     poring through a multiplying glasse, / Vpon a captiu’d crab-louse, or a cheese-mite / To be dissected, as the sports of nature, / With a neat Spanish needle

   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, chapter 18, in Leviathan‎^[6], London: Andrew Crooke, page 94:

     For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, (that is their Passions and Selfe-love,) through which, every little payment appeareth a great grievance; but are destitute of those prospective glasses, (namely Morall and Civill Science,) to see a farre off the miseries that hang over them, and cannot without such payments be avoyded.

Related terms

• multiplying lens