An ophthalmologist in Arcata, California, is puzzled by the way some of his older patients refer to a single lens. Several of them call it a len, not a lens. This gives the hosts a chance to focus on what linguists call back-formations. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “A Single Len”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is David, and I live in Arcata, California.
Welcome, David.
My question relates to a peculiar use of the word lens. Through the years working as an ophthalmologist, I’ve encountered maybe a handful of patients who use the word lens as if it’s plural, the singular of which is lens. For example, they might say, my limbs are scratched, but the right limb is not as scratched as the left limb.
That’s interesting. These are usually patients over 60 years of age, often with strong Southern accents. So I’m wondering, are there parts of the Southern U.S. where this usage is current today?
What an interesting question. So they use LEN like they would say, I dropped my contact LEN?
Yes, they might say that. I don’t think I’ve heard it in connection with the contact, but it’s usually a spectacle lens.
Okay, okay. And so what is the plural?
The plural is lens.
Oh, lens. So one lens, two lens?
Correct.
Okay, and they don’t order contact lenses?
No, they would order contact lens.
How interesting. That’s pretty cool. You’re encountering these southern speakers in Arcata, California?
Yes. You know, it’s been a handful of patients in more than 30 years.
Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, it’s a definite pattern in a certain population, apparently.
Yeah, we’ve encountered this in a few other words in English. We’ve seen this, for example, in the word K-U-D-O-S, which many English speakers took to be a plural, but actually started out as a singular, and people decided that kudos was more than one kudo. And actually, that is pretty much the standard usage these days anyway. So that one has made the full transformation.
I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered the singular word lens being taken as a plural before, but that’s a very nice little data point there. Where else have we seen that, Martha?
Well, I was going to say, David, you’re an ophthalmologist. Is that right?
Right. And so as a medical person, I mean, you must be familiar with bicep, right?
Oh, there we go. David, feel my bicep.
Oh, yes. And singularized.
Right, right. The word is biceps, and it lost that S because it’s sort of misunderstood as a plural.
Yeah, same phenomenon. So in reality, biceps is both plural and singular, right?
Yeah, I think so. In the strictest usage. So I have two biceps, and I have a biceps on my left arm.
Yeah, honestly, I haven’t heard that phenomenon before with that particular word lens. I’m going to start listening for it, but you can see how it would happen.
Yeah, it’s called a back formation. And people look at a word and decide to analyze it differently than is normal and decide, for example, that it’s a conjugated form or that it’s a plural form when it isn’t either of those things.
I see. So they infer something that’s not true.
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. It’s definitely a known phenomenon. It’s interesting to hear it. And if you come across some more examples, I’d love to know where exactly these folks are from and see if we can pin some kind of regional information to this.
Well, thank you for taking the call.
Okay, sure thing. Thank you for calling.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
If you’ve noticed something in the speech of other people and you’ve got questions about it, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673. And you can send all your questions about slang and jargon, new words and old words to words@waywordradio.org.
