Ophthalmology

The fifth entry is a hipermetropia, one line below a miopia, and the pair looks perfectly symmetrical. In the consulting room it is. British English calls the first condition « long-sighted » and the second « short-sighted »: one eye cannot read the menu, the other cannot read the far wall, and the two compounds are built the same way. Outside the consulting room the symmetry collapses. « Short-sighted » leaves the clinic and becomes a judgement nobody hears as medical — a short-sighted decision, a short-sighted policy, a minister accused of being short-sighted. For the opposite compliment, English does not reach for the partner it already has; it reaches for a third compound, « far-sighted »: a far-sighted investment, a far-sighted founder. « Long-sighted » can be used that way, but it is heard first as the eye, and it stays with the optician. Note too that in American English the eye condition itself is « farsighted », so there the clinic and the compliment share one word. Portuguese divides it as we do in the clinic and not outside it: uma política míope is ordinary, and no policy has ever been called hipermétrope.