A Chinese lantern names a collapsible translucent covering for a light; it is also the name of a perennial ground-cherry plant widely cultivated for its showy brilliant orange-red calyxes that resemble the lamp's decorative colored papers. The botanical Chinese lantern has a number of other names too, including Japanese lantern plant, winter cherry, and, from its Arabic-based scientific name, alkakengi.

Unlike the Chinese lantern, the term Aristotle's lantern has only one application, and it refers to fauna, not flora or lighting. Twenty-three hundred years ago, that Greek philosopher noted the resemblance between the shape of a sea urchin's mouth and the frame of a lantern; his observation led some long ago marine watcher to dub the echinoderm's five-toothed masticatory apparatus Aristotle's lantern.

By the way, be sure not to confuse Aristotle's lantern with the lantern associated with Diogenes. A contemporary of Aristotle, Diogenes was famed, according to legend, for carrying a lantern in the light of day as he searched for an honest man.