What is "crystalline lens"

Humor \Hu"mor\, n. [OE. humour, OF. humor, umor, F. humeur, L. humor, umor, moisture, fluid, fr. humere, umere, to be moist. See Humid.] [Written also humour.]

1. Moisture, especially, the moisture or fluid of animal bodies, as the chyle, lymph, etc.; as, the humors of the eye, etc.

   Note: The ancient physicians believed that there were four humors (the blood, phlegm, yellow bile or choler, and black bile or melancholy), on the relative proportion of which the temperament and health depended.

2. (Med.) A vitiated or morbid animal fluid, such as often causes an eruption on the skin. ``A body full of humors.''
   --Sir W. Temple.

3. State of mind, whether habitual or temporary (as formerly supposed to depend on the character or combination of the fluids of the body); disposition; temper; mood; as, good humor; ill humor.

   Examine how your humor is inclined, And which the ruling passion of your mind.
   --Roscommon.

   A prince of a pleasant humor.
   --Bacon.

   I like not the humor of lying.
   --Shak.

4. pl. Changing and uncertain states of mind; caprices; freaks; vagaries; whims.

   Is my friend all perfection, all virtue and discretion? Has he not humors to be endured?
   --South.

5. That quality of the imagination which gives to ideas an incongruous or fantastic turn, and tends to excite laughter or mirth by ludicrous images or representations; a playful fancy; facetiousness.

   For thy sake I admit That a Scot may have humor, I'd almost said wit.
   --Goldsmith.

   A great deal of excellent humor was expended on the perplexities of mine host.
   --W. Irving.

   Aqueous humor, Crystalline humor or Crystalline lens, Vitreous humor. (Anat.) See Eye.

   Out of humor, dissatisfied; displeased; in an unpleasant frame of mind.

   Syn: Wit; satire; pleasantry; temper; disposition; mood; frame; whim; fancy; caprice. See Wit.

Lens \Lens\ (l[e^]nz), n.; pl. Lenses (-[e^]z). [L. lens a lentil. So named from the resemblance in shape of a double convex lens to the seed of a lentil. Cf. Lentil.] (Opt.) A piece of glass, or other transparent substance, ground with two opposite regular surfaces, either both curved, or one curved and the other plane, and commonly used, either singly or combined, in optical instruments, for changing the direction of rays of light, and thus magnifying objects, or otherwise modifying vision. In practice, the curved surfaces are usually spherical, though rarely cylindrical, or of some other figure. [1913 Webster] Lenses

Note: Of spherical lenses, there are six varieties, as shown in section in the figures herewith given: viz., a plano-concave; b double-concave; c plano-convex; d double-convex; e converging concavo-convex, or converging meniscus; f diverging concavo-convex, or diverging meniscus.

Crossed lens (Opt.), a double-convex lens with one radius equal to six times the other.

Crystalline lens. (Anat.) See Eye.

Fresnel lens (Opt.), a compound lens formed by placing around a central convex lens rings of glass so curved as to have the same focus; used, especially in lighthouses, for concentrating light in a particular direction; -- so called from the inventor.

Multiplying lens or Multiplying glass (Opt.), a lens one side of which is plane and the other convex, but made up of a number of plane faces inclined to one another, each of which presents a separate image of the object viewed through it, so that the object is, as it were, multiplied.

Polyzonal lens. See Polyzonal.

Crystalline \Crys"tal*line\ (kr?s"tal-l?n or -l?n; 277), a. [L. crystallinus, from Gr. ????: cf. F. cristallin. See Crystal.]

1. Consisting, or made, of crystal.

   Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.
   --Shak.

2. Formed by crystallization; like crystal in texture.

   Their crystalline structure.
   --Whewell.

3. Imperfectly crystallized; as, granite is only crystalline, while quartz crystal is perfectly crystallized.

4. Fig.: Resembling crystal; pure; transparent; pellucid. ``The crystalline sky.''
   --Milton.

   Crystalline heavens, or Crystalline spheres, in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, two transparent spheres imagined to exist between the region of the fixed stars and the primum mobile (or outer circle of the heavens, which by its motion was supposed to carry round all those within it), in order to explain certain movements of the heavenly bodies.

   Crystalline lens (Anat.), the capsular lenslike body in the eye, serving to focus the rays of light. It consists of rodlike cells derived from the external embryonic epithelium.

n. biconvex transparent body situated behind the iris in the eye; it focuses light waves on the retina [syn: lens]