"It first appeared in English in the word telescope. This was a usage adapted from Galileo’s Italian word telescopi for his new device, which he seems to have first used in 1611; two years later, Kepler employed the modern Latin telescopium. Galileo and Kepler apparently tried out a series of other names before settling on telescope, including perspicillum, conspicillum, specillum, and penicillium; if they had decided to use one of the others, it is very possible that we should now not have all these words starting in tele–."
World Wide Words: Action at a distance
