Comment on What are the most confusing false friends from your language to another that are spelt exactly the same?

Lee@retrolemmy.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Sure, but “camera” doesn’t really mean room, it means chamber, which is a small enclosed space, and if you grab a box it is a camera by definition (just a very small one). And if you close every place where light can get into a small chamber you get a “camera obscura” which just means a dark chamber. And if you poke a hole on a camera obscura you will see an image of the outside being projected on the opposite wall. This was a very common trick in pre-industrialization, and became known as Camera Obscura, from then someone had the idea to put photosensitive material, also known as photographic, on the opposite wall and created the first photographic chamber, or “photographic camera”, which eventually was abbreviated to camera.

  So yeah, they mean different things, but not really.

  source