Trending: ‘crosshair’

Crosshair leapt to the top of our lookups on February 18th, 2019, after Roger Stone used an image of them in an Instagram post that was widely viewed as a questionable life choice.

Roger Stone's Instagram account displayed and then deleted a post showing a picture of the federal judge overseeing his prosecution case and which included an image of a crosshair, often used to denote a target. https://t.co/n8jqroglJ0

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 19, 2019

We define crosshair as “a fine wire or thread in the focus of the eyepiece of an optical instrument used as a reference line in the field or for marking the instrumental axis.” Additionally, the word has a figurative sense in which it is used to describe someone or something being targeted as if through an aiming device having crosshairs. Stone claimed that his use of the symbol was misinterpreted, in apparent reference to a sense we do not define.

Until recently the earliest use of crosshair had we had on record came in the late 19th century. Recent findings, however, have shown the word in use some 200 years prior, initially found in late 17th century treatises on telescopes.

On the Stile-Ruler are fixt Telescopick Sights, and the cross hairs in their due place.
— William Molyneux, Sciothericum telescopicum, or, A new contrivance of adapting a telescope to an horizontal dial for observing the moment of time by day or night useful in all astronomical observations, and for regulating and adjusting curious pendulum-watches and other time-keepers, with proper tables requisite thereto, 1686