kpozin.net Projects & Musings by Konstantin Pozin

The word lens comes from the Latin word lentil. The optical tool was named thus because the shape of a concave lens is similar to that of a lentil seed.

In Hebrew, the meaning of lens was added to the word עֲדָשָׁה, which has meant lentil since Biblical Hebrew.

(Does anyone know if the scientific usage of עדשה was started with the creation of modern Hebrew, or sometime earlier?)