camera: [18] Latin camera originally meant ‘vaulted room’ (a sense preserved in the Radcliffe Camera, an 18th-century building housing part of Oxford University library, which has a vaulted roof). It came from Greek kamárā ‘vault, arch’, which is ultimately related to English chimney. In due course the meaning ‘vaulted room’ became weakened to simply ‘room’, which reached English, via Old French chambre, as chamber, and is preserved in the legal Latin phrase in camera ‘privately, in judge’s chambers’.
In the 17th century, an optical instrument was invented consisting of a small closed box with a lens fixed in one side which produced an image of external objects on the inside of the box. The same effect could be got in a small darkened room, and so the device was called a camera obscura ‘dark chamber’. When the new science of photography developed in the 19th century, using the basic principle of the camera obscura, camera was applied to the picture-forming box. => chamber, chimney
camera (n.)
1708, "vaulted building," from Latin camera "vaulted room" (source of Italian camera, Spanish camara, French chambre), from Greek kamara "vaulted chamber."
The word also was used early 18c. as a short form of Modern Latin camera obscura "dark chamber" (a black box with a lens that could project images of external objects), contrasted with camera lucida (Latin for "light chamber"), which uses prisms to produce on paper beneath the instrument an image, which can be traced. It became the word for "picture-taking device" when modern photography began, c. 1840 (extended to television filming devices 1928). Camera-shy is attested from 1890. Old Church Slavonic komora, Lithuanian kamara, Old Irish camra all are borrowings from Latin.
实用例句
1. Sylvia, camera in hand, asked, "Where do we go first?"
西尔维娅手里拿着相机问道：“我们先去哪里？”
来自柯林斯例句
2. The camera combines rugged reliability with unequalled optical performance and speed.
这款相机既坚固耐用，又有超凡的光学性能和快门速度。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He pounced on the photographer, beat him up and smashed his camera.
他突然扑向摄影师，痛打了他一顿，还摔碎了他的照相机。
来自柯林斯例句
4. There was a Leica camera for sale in the window.
橱窗里有架莱卡相机待售。
来自柯林斯例句
5. With trembling fingers, he removed the camera from his pocket.
