Word.ws English Dictionary

catopter

catopter noun: a reflecting optical glass or instrument; a mirror.

Noun

catopter (plural catopters)

  1. (obsolete) A reflecting optical glass or instrument; a mirror.
    • My Cat whose black fur was so glossy and fine Her use of Catharon one well could divine. Almost indeed a Catopter she showed.1885, C.M. Van Wagenen, A Catagraph
    • For example, at research of an interference electromagnetic field near to a catopter on the metered reflectivity it is possible to define a permittivity and width of a dielectric slice.2000, Siberian Russian Student Workshops on Electron Devices and Materials, page 72
  2. A unit of measure of the converging power of a curved mirror, equal to the reciprocal of the focal length in meters; a diopter applied to a curved reflective surface as opposed to a lens.
    • This focus divided into 40", gives the catopters.1916, James John Lewis, State Board Examinations: Questions and Answers, page 41
    • A catopter mirror will reflect parallel rays of light to a focus at a distance of one meter or 40 inches.1923, Eric G. Tavs, Questions and Answers in Optometry, page 23
  3. An Ancient Greek anal dilator or speculum.
    • Hippocrates (B.C. 432) described an instrument, the catopter, which was undoubtedly used as an anal speculum,1897, W.L Reid, “President's Address: The History, Forms, and Theories of the Vaginal Speculum”, in Transactions of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society of Glasgow, volume 1, page 119
    • In the course of excavations undertaken in Pompei, such catopters had been found in "the house of surgeons".1972, S. Drobni, M. Fehér, Recent Progress in the Study of Disorders of the Colon and Rectum, page 102

Examples of catopter in a sentence

  • Then on a catopter MSD the vacuum ion-beam deposition of aluminium (hAl = 0,5 microns) was carried out.2002, AD Bialik, IA Voronin, AM Zlobin, “Temperature dependences of fibre-optical sensors of mechanical values”, in Proceedings. 3rd Annual...
  • The converging or diverging power of a mirror is expressed in terms of a catopter.1934, Alf Henry Johnsen, Bertram A. Weeks, Frederick H. Weller, The Optical Shop and Counter, page 19:
  • Hippocrates' treatise on fistulas clearly mentions this technique, and later, Galen's Levicom refers to the catopter which is an anal speculum.2013, Michael E. Moran, Urolithiasis: A Comprehensive History, page 246:
  • the catopter, which is called the anal dilator, in the same way as the diopter is called the female dilator.2020, Maria Gerolemou, Lilia Diamantopoulou, Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period:

Synonyms of catopter

Forms of catopter

pluralcatopters

Origin of catopter

Ancient Greek κάτοπτρον (kátoptron, “mirror”).

Questions about catopter

What does catopter mean?
Catopter means a reflecting optical glass or instrument; a mirror.
How do you use catopter in a sentence?
Then on a catopter MSD the vacuum ion-beam deposition of aluminium (hAl = 0,5 microns) was carried out.
What part of speech is catopter?
Catopter is a noun.
What is the plural of catopter?
The plural of catopter is catopters.

Words near catopter in the dictionary

  1. Catonically
  2. Catoosa
  3. Catoosa County
  4. catophile
  5. catophiles
  6. catopter
  7. catopters
  8. catoptiomancy
  9. catoptric
  10. catoptrical
  11. catoptrically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: catopter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “catopter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/catopter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.