The adjective ocular means âpertaining to an eyeâ
something possessing eyes is oculate, and a person who
studies and understands eyes is an oculist
practising oculism (but an ocularist is a person who makes glass eyes).
Doctors have a whole collection of eye-related words
that need not detain us for long. Examples include
supraocular (âabove the eyeâ), periocular (âaround the eyeâ)
and the grim exoculation (âremoval of an eyeâ), but there are many more.
Monocular once meant âhaving one eyeâ, but that task has largely been taken over
by monoculous, leaving monocular to deal with âpertaining to one eyeâ. A monocule
is a creature with only one eye; a monoculist, monoculus
or monoculite is a one-eyed person. And of course a monocle is a single eye-glass.
Binocular has similarly surrendered the meaning âhaving two eyesâ to binoculate
reserving âpertaining to two eyesâ for itâs own use. A binocle is an opera glassâa
little pair of binoculars on a stick that can be used to observe the action on-stage.
For those with greater numbers of eyes than two, we have
trinocular (three), senocular (six), octonocular (eight),
centoculated (one hundred, reserved for the mythical all-seeing giant Argus Panoptes)
and the noncommittal multiocular (many).