> as lemmas

1671 J. Milton Paradise Regain'd iv. 57 Many a fair Edifice..(so well I have dispos'd My Aerie Microscope) thou may'st behold Outside and inside both. View more context for this quotation

1742 A. Pope New Dunciad 225 The Critic Eye, that microscope of wit, Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit.

1765 J. Boswell Jrnl. 1 Jan. in Boswell on Grand Tour (1953) I. 304 There are few men who can keep their glory when they are examined under the microscope.

1839 P. J. Bailey Festus 150 Watching the thoughts of men and angels Through moral microscopes.

1852 N. Hawthorne Blithedale Romance ix. 83 If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitable tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again.

1903 Westm. Gaz. 21 Feb. 7/1 The Board would work..under the microscope of a Committee of Censure.

1929 Amer. Speech 4 188 If one should put the new meaning under the microscope, the following explanation might appear. That meaning of momentarily which is described by the N.E.D. in its definition no. 2, brings into mind a series of moments one after the other... But in the new meaning..one of them is to become of greater importance than the others.

1968 Economist 13 July p. xviii/2 American motor insurance is now to be put under the microscope.

1992 Rugby World & Post Mar. 41/1 We all know that we are under the microscope after various events in the past, but I think we can control ourselves.