LENS NOUN (HEALTH AND FITNESS)

Short for contact lens: a small, very thin piece of plastic which can be worn inside the eyelid, in contact with the eyeball, to correct faulty vision; often in the plural lenses. Etymology: An abbreviated form of contact lens. History and Usage: Contact lenses were invented by Dr A. E. Fick of Zurich as long ago as the 1880s (when they were made of glass), but did not become available to the general public until the forties, and have only been widely worn from about the sixties onwards. The full term contact lens had been abbreviated to contact by the early sixties and to lens by the seventies; by the eighties it was nearly always abbreviated in colloquial use, although the full term remained in use among opticians. The technology has developed during the seventies and eighties to make several types available: hard lenses, the original type available to the public, are made of rigid plastic; soft lenses, made of a hydrophilic gel which is soft to the touch and moulds itself to the shape of the eye, were introduced in the sixties as less harmful to the cornea; gas-permeable lenses, which are more rigid but allow the passage of oxygen to the eye, were developed soon afterwards and became widely available in the eighties. The fact that contact lens became the slang name for a mixture of hallucinogenic drugs in the eighties is an indication that lenses are considered commonplace in modern society. Although many astigmatics can wear lenses successfully, prescribing and fitting them can be complex. Which? June 1987, p. 272 These are extended-wear lenses...and people should be aware that they run a 20 per cent higher risk of bacterial infection. Woman's Journal Mar. 1990, p. 155