parallax

[ˈperəˌlaks]

NOUN

parallax (noun) · parallaxes (plural noun)

1. the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g. through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera.

   "what you see in the viewfinder won't be quite what you get in the photograph because of parallax error"

   • the angular amount of parallax in a particular case, especially that of a star viewed from different points in the earth's orbit.

     "he succeeded in measuring the parallax of the star 61 Cygni"

ORIGIN

late 16th century (also in the general sense ‘fact of seeing wrongly’): from French parallaxe, from Greek parallaxis ‘a change’, from parallassein ‘to alternate’, based on allassein ‘to exchange’ (from allos ‘other’).

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