Graywolf wrote:
I would think it is an British variant of lens.
That would be why the ten dictionaries I consulted came from both sides of the "pond." (Although I think both Webster's and Oxford dictionaries also show the spellings in the other dialect.) In any case, I grew up with the non-American* version of English spelling, and had never seen "lense" until I started hanging around newsgroups. Same place I first encountered "aperature", "warrantee" used in place of "warranty" and "loose" as the opposite of "find." As a matter of fact, when I was in this heated discussion on a newsgroup about "lense" a few years ago, there were American posters who said "it's the British spelling" and non-Americans who assumed it was American. As I said at the time, having checked these multiple, multinational sources, it is apparently neither British nor American but just plain wrong. Its appearance in a single dictionary source *since* that time suggests to me its origin is misspelling finally recognized through sheer persistence.
*no such thing as "British" spelling. There's American English, and then English used by everybody else in the English speaking world. "British spelling" implies the non-American version is the minority version, where in fact the opposite is true.
And that's my pet rant, guys! ERNR
