Other forms: microscopes
A microscope is the instrument that makes invisibly small things look big. Under the microscope, a light microscope, an electron microscope.
Light sets a hard limit: nothing much smaller than half the wavelength of light can be separated, which is why electron microscopes exist. Under the microscope also means under close scrutiny. The Greek means to look at the small.
1nounmicroscopeAn instrument that magnifies very small things.
“Under the microscope, the drop of pond water was full of tiny moving creatures.”
microscope is an instrument.
From Greek mikros, small, plus skopein, to look at. Coined in Latin in the seventeenth century.
Proto-Indo-European
*speḱ-
New Latin
microscopium
Italian
microscopio
English, today
microscope
Built from
Borrowed from Italian microscopio. From New Latin microscopium and Italian microscopio, from Ancient Greek μικρός (“small”) + σκοπέω (“to look at”), equivalent to micro- + -scope.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA