Over high tea yesterday I happened to mention that I was wearing my spare pair of glasses because of an accident to my main pair. I said that the part of my glasses that goes from the edge of the lens to my ear had broken.
I naturally referred to this as the leg of my glasses. My companions were an English woman who insisted that the word was arm, and two Canadians (one male and one female if that's relevant), who were equally vehement that the word was temple.
Any other possibilities?
Bingley
it's always been the bow (boh) to me.
Yup, I agree with the Canadians (not surprisingly), it's temple, but it's one of the words I can never remember when I really need it and I often substitute arm, only to be reprimanded by the people in the know.
Arm, leg, temple? Prescription glasses cost an arm and a leg in the UK and you may have to go to the moneylenders before you can pay for them.
- - - is what the two monocles did when they got together in the optician's window.
As my latest specs cost me an arm and a leg, I happily ascribe either limb to them, although I think I favour "arm" as a descriptor of that element.
I too would call the part from the hinge at the corner of teh lens to the ear, the temple... but i think i might also use temple arm.
well, the US Patent Office calls them temples:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/def/351.htmmy family, all six of whom are eyeglass wearers, have always called them bows. temples are the part of your body which the bow crosses. must be a midwestern US thing...
I (a Canadian) have always used and heard 'arm'.
I have heard temples more often than bows. Many sites mention temples, e.g.:
Medem: Medical Library: Introduction to Eyeglasses: Bridges, ... - ... Medical Library.
Printer-friendly format. Introduction to Eyeglasses: Bridges, Temples and Hinges. Keeping the glasses on
your face. ...
http://www.medem.com/MedLB/article_detaillb.cfm?article_ID=ZZZ69YNLH4C&sub_cat=114 search within
this site
But then I found an equal number os sites using the word bows:
BladePro Eyeglasses - How to make Blade Pro Eyeglasses. This tutorial will ... the rims: Now
to add in a bridge and the hinges for the bows to attach to. Select ...
http://psp.tephras.com/tutorials/glasses/
Hmm . . . I think my family always calls them stems. ?
... and I've always called them earpieces, though the doc calls them temples.
I've always called them legs, but my optician calls them sides.
Thank heavens, Anna! I was beginning to think I was the only one who calls them earpieces.
"Earpiece" up here in New England, too!
my wife, a life-long Vermonter, calls them "bows".
thank you very much.
My roommate, a lifelong myopic, also calls them "bows". And he's insistent that there's no other name for them ~ he'll probably start referring to y'all as my "crackhead internet friends who don't know a bow from a hole in the ground". I've found something he's linguistically fascist about! HOORAY!
Now I can bring this up every time he pronounces
nuclear wrong.
Another mid-westerner who has always called them bows and had no idea there was any other word that might be used for them chiming in.
I've always found "the ear-thingy" works for me!
I'm with you, CK. Until this thread, I don't think I'd ever called them anything, even though I wear glasses; maybe "that part that goes over your ear." Ashamed to admit it *never occurred to me there was a *name for it. Bad form for a would-be word person!
Etaoin, you come as close as anyone to our usage hereabouts. When anyone calls them anything, it's bows. 'Temple' is what we call the litle ears on the insides of the bows which, on some models, rest on your nose or, on other models, the little metal part sticking out of the inside of the bows which holds the pads which rest on the nose.
another Canuck weighing in with....arms. But my parents were British and people up over yar tells me I speaks funny sometimes.
This is a bit like a bonnet/hood, boot/trunk, ring/phone-or-call (and many more examples) dichotomy....I wonder how many other items we have in common, have different names in different parts o' the world?