Translate telescope | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish Definition of telescope
noun
an optical instrument designed to make distant objects appear nearer, containing an arrangement of lenses, or of curved mirrors and lenses, by which rays of light are collected and focused and the resulting image magnified.
verb
(with reference to an object made of concentric tubular parts) slide or cause to slide into itself, so that it becomes smaller: [no object]:five steel sections that telescope into one another [with object] crush (a vehicle) by the force of an impact. [with object] condense or conflate so as to occupy less space or time:a way of telescoping many events into a relatively brief period
