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1 June
In the same way as we refer to very small things as microscopic, perhaps we should refer to far away things as telescopic.
— Dave Steele (@hullodave) May 31, 2013
"Dougal, these cows are microscopic. Those cows are telescopic." Actually forget the previous tweet.
— Dave Steele (@hullodave) May 31, 2013
Of course, @hullodave means it as a joke, for humorous effect, but he is right, of course, that the words folding umbrella and telescopic umbrella are synonymous, thereby concentrating on the incidental fact that one cylinder (or more) slides within another (or others) to allow the focus to be adjusted, rather than on the actual purpose of making distant things more visible for which the device was invented.
A feature of his nonsense verse, Lewis Carroll used the word portmanteau to describe a word with more than one meaning present, for example the opening line of 'Jabberwocky' :
'Twas brilling and the slithy toves
Two words (I won't say which) entered the English language because of this poem alone. Carroll's mind would have seen perfectly, and condemned in his child friends, how viewing telescopically was being confused with the mechanical properties of the telescope itself : he had an odium for muddled thinking of the kind identified by Dave Steele.
However, if I have a rifle with a telescopic sight, it is clear enough and right that the sight has the properties of a telescope, seeing accurately over a greater distance than would be possible without it.
With 'microscopic', the meaning of the word has been blurred in other ways, meaning no longer literally what is rendered visible (or more clearly) by using a microscope - a scornful patron could well nowadays condemn a microscopic salad, so the connection with the viewing instrument has just been lost in the hyperbole of calling something small.
Though Dave's follow-up Tweet is hard to construe, he must have been gazing on some wee coos during his recent Scottish jaunt to come up with this whimsy. One hopes...
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