Which term refers to double vision?

Diplopia is the medical term used to describe double vision, a condition where a person sees two images of a single object. This can occur due to various reasons, including misalignment of the eyes, issues with the eye muscles, or problems within the nervous system. When the eyes do not properly align, the brain struggles to fuse the images from each eye into a single perception, leading to this visual disturbance.

In contrast, amblyopia, often referred to as "lazy eye," involves a decrease in vision that cannot be corrected with glasses, usually stemming from improper visual development in childhood, rather than a problem with the alignment of both eyes. Strabismus is a condition that involves the misalignment of the eyes themselves but does not directly refer to experiencing double vision; instead, it may lead to diplopia when the misaligned eye fails to coordinate properly with the other eye. Myopia describes nearsightedness, a refractive error where distant objects appear blurry while close objects can be seen clearly, and is unrelated to the phenomenon of seeing double images.