Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A pair of eyeglasses or opera glasses with a short handle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An opera-glass.
- n. A lorgnon.
Wiktionary
- n. An opera glass with a handle.
- n. Elaborate double eyeglasses.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An opera glass. elaborate double eyeglasses.
WordNet 3.0
- n. eyeglasses that are held to the eyes with a long handle
Etymologies
- French lorgner ("to take a sidelong look at") (from Middle French lorgne ("crosseyed")) + -ette (Wiktionary)
- French, from lorgner, to peer at, from Old French, from lorgne, squinting, of Germanic origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Behind the lorgnette was a large and frowning dowager, who followed up the glare with a loud "Shhh!”
“lorgnette" that had been handed to them was a new invention of Thomas A. Edison.”
“Lalique's flora and fauna are everywhere—nude feminine figures with insect wings on a necklace, a lizard lorgnette, an ivy and clover hatpin, swans here, wheat sheaves there, a pair of white peacocks with multicolor tails standing on a heart-shaped citrine.”
““The funny mistress of five or six accents,” Jane regaled them all with the story of her dinner party, successively taking the part of a lecherous old Oxonian who was trying to pinch her bottom, a drunk Ceylonese official, and a dry old colonial widow with a lorgnette.”
“A woman behind me taps me on the shoulder with her lorgnette—out of tempo, by the way—and my new friend and I break it off as the curtain comes up.”
“Sotheby 's (Nov. 14) will lead its sale with jeweled pieces made for the Chinese and Turkish markets in the 18th-19th century, including a rare gold, enamel diamond and pearl-set lorgnette watch circa 1810 (estimate: 150,000 francs-200,000 francs).”
“This was a person … of a particular kind, no longer young … with rather long, still thick, dark hair, slightly streaked with grey and a pointed beard … He had no watch, but he had a tortoiseshell lorgnette on a black ribbon.”
“I think she thought that Joan would look at her through a lorgnette, and that Stenning would wear a morning-coat and talk about the League.”
“Moreover, it was holding a small metallic rod rather like a lorgnette against one eye.”
“This haunting imaginary portrait of a bust-length mustachioed bravo topped with a fanciful green hat and caparisoned in a black-patterned red cloak and white ruff is dominated by one coal-black eye thickly encircled in poker-hot orange, which juts downward like the handle of a lorgnette.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lorgnette’.
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250 Extra Spelling Words
Some more words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
cultellarius, barouche, palanquin, badelaire, cavetto, tregetour, tergiversate, rhododendron, rhadamanthine, thyrsus, cappelletti, bradycardia and 238 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
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phrontistery - l
from phrontistery.info
labarum, labefactation, labeorphily, labile, lability, labret, lac, laches, lacis, laic, lam?, lar and 496 more...
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the brothers
factotem, extrapolation, antinomy, antenome, pusillanimous, capons, caftan, pejorative, cropper, cowl, perfidious, fichu and 138 more...
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Quirkstyle
Fashion elegance, oddities, styles, and cool garments.
tatterdemalion, froufrou, gingham, argyle, corset, hoop skirt, pantaloons, bloomers, jaunty, seersucker, twill, ganguro and 126 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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summer words 2009
how many words can I make mine this summer?
largess, hoyden, catholic, fornicatress, quean, slattern, bildungsroman, sybaritic, descresent, nodus, frittle, callipygian and 529 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, L
lisle, lahar, loupe, labret, latten, luster, lagomorph, lamentation, limicole, lunge, lobtail, latifolious and 182 more...
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Mollusque's miscellany
A mixture of words that I like or have commented on, along with ones parked here so they'd be listed somewhere or remind me of lists I want to make.
oranger, monographer, preoccupied, bu, bobization, coinventor, tetrapyloctomy, borgmannian, suspercollate, manhug, mancrush, obituarist and 604 more...
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epeolatrist's list
epeolatry, syzygy, sphallolalia, lucubration, lugubrious, cacology, mellifluous, tmesis, synecdoche, anathema, eschatological, razbliuto and 349 more...
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Never For Sale On Craigslist
List of items never for sale on craigslist.
Should you find one of these for sale, let us know. We'll scare you up a coupon for a free day at a gym or something.vectis, soupir, porcupine-machine, electric pig, poke-bonnet, shawm, staddle stone, beating-engine, hicon, figurehead, low-warp loom, radevore and 516 more...
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The Innocents Abroad
Words rounded up while reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.
rakish, excursionist, bowelless, pilgrimizing, melodeon, woebegone, abaft, sextant, veriest, behindhand, stanchion, avast and 188 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
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lanklenmot's Words
ineluctable, prelapsarian, bien pensant, prospero, preternatural, gratifying, iconoclast, cineast, persnickety, tumescent, galvanize, pap and 887 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for lorgnette.
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