window

The English word for window is a Viking word, and a literal one — Old Norse vindauga, "wind-eye." It came into English in the early Middle English period and displaced two older Anglo-Saxon compounds, ēag-þyrel ("eye-thirl," eye-hole) and ēag-duru ("eye-door"). The Norse compound won partly because the Norse settlers had glass earlier and named the thing in their own kitchens, partly because the metaphor is sharper — a window is not an eye-shaped hole, it is the place the wind comes through where the eye also goes. The thirl of the older English compound now survives in one word only: nostril, "nose-thirl." Underneath sit two of the deepest PIE roots: *h₂weh₁-, "to blow" (giving English wind, Latin ventus, Greek aer), and *h₃ekʷ-, "to see, the eye" (giving English eye, Latin oculus, Greek ōps, the Cyclops, the optic nerve, autopsy). The window is the wind and the eye, compounded by people who had glass.

stack

Modern English

window

an opening in a wall, usually filled with glass, that admits light and air and permits sight through; extended to any framed aperture (the windows of a soul, a launch window, a window of opportunity, a browser window)

Middle English

windowe / windohe (c. 1200 – 1400)

an opening in a wall for light and air; the loan-form taken into English and given native pronunciation; gradually displacing the older native compounds eyethurl and eyedore through the 13th and 14th centuries

Old Norse

vindauga

compound of vindr ("wind") + auga ("eye"); a Viking-Age word for an opening high in the wall or roof through which smoke and air could pass and through which one could look out; the Norse domestic vocabulary had this word before glazing was widespread and the term carried through when glass arrived

Old English (the displaced terms)

ēag-þyrel / ēag-duru

ēage ("eye") + þyrel ("hole, perforation, opening") or duru ("door"); the two native compounds — "eye-thirl" and "eye-door" — both treating the aperture as an eye-shaped opening; both used for window-like openings before the Norse word arrived; both fell out of use by the late Middle English period, the Norse compound having displaced them

Old English (the surviving morpheme)

þyrel

"a hole, an opening, an aperture"; the same root gives the verb þyrlian, "to pierce," and ultimately the modern verb thrill (originally "to pierce, to strike through"); the only surviving compound in modern English is nostril ("nose-thirl," from Old English nosþyrel), now opaque to most speakers but morphologically identical to the lost eye-thirl

Proto-Germanic (wind)

*windaz

"wind, that which blows"; from PIE *h₂weh₁-nt-, the present participle of the blow-verb — "the blowing thing"; gives Old English wind, Old Norse vindr, Old High German wint, Gothic winds — the same noun across every branch of Germanic

Proto-Germanic (eye)

*augō

"eye"; gives Old English ēage, Old Norse auga, Old High German ouga, Gothic augō; the Germanic forms show an irregular /au/ vocalism that has puzzled Indo-Europeanists — the relationship to the wider PIE eye-word is real but the phonology is not perfectly regular

PIE (wind)

*h₂weh₁-

"to blow"; one of the basic weather-verbs of Indo-European. The present-participle form *h₂weh₁-nt- ("the blowing one") gave the noun for wind across Germanic. The bare verb-stem gave Latin ventus (wind, with the same participial morphology) and the related verb vannere (to winnow, to blow chaff away from grain). The Greek branch gave the verb áēmi ("I blow"); the related noun aḗr ("lower atmosphere") is traditionally connected to the same root, though its phonology is irregular enough that some etymologists treat it as Pre-Greek. Sanskrit gave vāti ("it blows") and vāyu (wind, the wind-god). Across the family the root keeps the same image: the unbounded movement of air, named by the act of blowing

PIE (eye)

*h₃ekʷ-

"to see, to perceive visually, the eye"; one of the most productive perception-roots in Indo-European, sitting in a tight cluster with *weid- ("to see, to know") and *derḱ- ("to look at clearly"). The Italic branch gave Latin oculus (eye) → English ocular, oculist, monocle, binocular; and through oculāris, the diminutive that produced Spanish ojo, French œil, Italian occhio. The Greek branch gave ōps (eye, face) → English optic, optometry, synopsis ("seeing-together"), autopsy ("self-seeing"), Cyclops ("round-eye"), myopia ("closed-eye"); and the verb opsomai ("I will see") supplied the future tense for the suppletive Greek verb of seeing. The Indo-Iranian branch gave Sanskrit akṣi (eye). The Slavic branch gave Russian око. The Germanic branch took the root with some irregular vocalism into *augō, giving English eye and the second element of window

how it shifted

The English word for window is a Norse loan that displaced two older Anglo-Saxon compounds, and the metaphor it carried in was sharper than either of the ones it replaced. The Anglo-Saxons had ēag-þyrel ("eye-thirl," eye-hole) and ēag-duru ("eye-door"); both treated the opening as something shaped like an eye, an aperture for the eye to look through. The Norse word was vindauga, "wind-eye" — and the difference is in which noun is the head. In the English compounds, the eye is the head and "thirl" or "door" specifies what kind of eye-shaped thing it is. In the Norse compound, the eye is the modifier and the wind is the head: the thing is a wind-aperture, named for what passes through it, with the eye-aspect attached as a kind of secondary function. A window in pre-glass Scandinavia was first a hole for smoke and air; the seeing-out was a bonus. The Norse compound names the architecture of the room. The English compounds named the experience of the inhabitant. When the Norse word displaced the English ones around 1200, the conceptual frame shifted from "what does this look like from inside" to "what does this do for the building."

Two pieces of the older English vocabulary survived the displacement, and tracking them is its own small archaeology. Duru ("door") survived as the standard English word for the larger aperture, the one a person walks through; the loss was only in the compound eye-door, not in the bare noun. Þyrel ("hole, perforation, opening") survived in exactly one compound — nostril, from Old English nosþyrel, "nose-thirl" — and is otherwise extinct in the modern language. The opacity of the modern compound is total: most English speakers have no idea that nostril is morphologically identical to the lost eyethurl, that both name an aperture in the face by the same word for hole. The verb þyrlian ("to pierce, to bore a hole through") survived a different way: through a semantic shift in which the literal piercing became metaphorical, then a thrilling sensation became a metaphor for piercing emotion. Modern English thrill is the same word as the thirl in nostril — the verb that named the action of making the hole came to name the experience of being pierced, and then by further extension the experience of being moved. The wholeness of the original sense ("an opening made by piercing") is preserved in nostril; the action-piece of the sense ("the act of piercing") drifted into thrill. The two halves of one Old English word now live in completely different registers of the language.

Underneath vindauga sit two of the deepest roots in Indo-European, and each one has a vast English family on its own. The first element, vindr ("wind"), comes from PIE *h₂weh₁-, "to blow." The Germanic branch took the present-participle form *h₂weh₁-nt- ("the blowing one") and froze it as a noun — Old English wind, Old Norse vindr, Old High German wint, Gothic winds. Across every branch of Germanic the same word for the same thing, with negligible variation. The Italic branch produced Latin ventus through the same participial morphology, giving English ventilate, vent, ventiduct, and (through Spanish/French) aventura and adventure for risks the wind brings. Latin also kept the bare verb vannere, "to winnow," and the noun vannus, "winnowing basket" — the agricultural action of throwing grain into the wind so the chaff blows away. The Greek branch gave the verb áēmi ("I blow") securely from the same root; the Greek noun aḗr ("lower atmosphere"), which gives English aerial, aerobic ("life requiring air"), anaerobic, aeronautics, aerosol, is traditionally placed in this family on the strength of the semantics, though some etymologists treat it as a Pre-Greek noun whose resemblance to the blow-verb is coincidental. Sanskrit gave vāti ("it blows") and vāyu, the wind-god of the Vedas. Across the entire family the same image: air in motion, named by the act of blowing rather than by its substance.

The second element, auga ("eye"), comes from PIE *h₃ekʷ-, one of the great perception-roots of Indo-European. The Latin branch produced oculus, the diminutive of an older eye-word, giving English an enormous cluster: ocular, oculist, binocular, monocle, inoculate (originally "to graft an eye-bud into a plant," then medical), occult (originally "covered over, hidden from sight"). The Romance languages took the diminutive even further — Spanish ojo, French œil, Italian occhio are all oculus shortened through millennia of daily use. The Greek branch produced ōps ("eye, face") and its compounds — optic, optometry, synopsis ("a seeing-together"), autopsy ("a self-seeing," a viewing of the body after death), biopsy ("a life-seeing," a viewing of living tissue), Cyclops ("round-eye"), myopia ("closed-eye," shortsightedness). The Greek verb opsomai ("I will see") served as the suppletive future tense for the irregular verb of seeing. The Slavic branch gave Russian oko and Polish oko, the standard words for eye. The Indo-Iranian branch gave Sanskrit akṣi. The Germanic branch took the root with some unexplained vocalism into *augō, producing Old English ēage, Old Norse auga, German Auge, Dutch oog. The window, in the bones of the Norse compound English borrowed, is two of the deepest Indo-European perception and motion roots fused into a single domestic noun. The wind comes in; the eye looks out. A room with a window is a room admitting both — the breathing of the outside air, the seeing of the outside world, sharing one aperture. Pre-glass, the two functions were truly the same. Glass split them: light enters but wind does not. The word, which is older than the glass, still says both.

read the full essay on byclaude.net

cousins

wind — Old English wind, Proto-Germanic *windaz, PIE *h₂weh₁-nt-; the participial form ("the blowing thing") frozen as a noun across all of Germanic
eye — Old English ēage, Proto-Germanic *augō, PIE *h₃ekʷ-; the same eye-noun that sits inside window, native in the bare-noun form
nostril — Old English nosþyrel, "nose-thirl"; the only surviving English compound preserving þyrel ("hole, aperture") — morphologically the same word as the lost eyethurl
thrill — Old English þyrlian, "to pierce, to bore through"; the verb form of the same þyrel, semantically shifted from physical piercing to emotional piercing
door — Old English duru, PIE *dʰwer-; the larger aperture, related distantly to Latin foris ("door, outside") → foreign, forest
ventilate — Latin ventilāre, from ventus ("wind"); the Latin branch of the same blow-root, naming the deliberate moving of air
vent — Old French vent, from Latin ventus; an aperture for the passage of air or feeling — a calque, in a sense, of the wind-half of window
adventure — Old French aventure, from Latin adventūra; ultimately on advenīre rather than vent-, but folk-etymologized with the wind-bringing sense — "what the wind brings"
aerial / aerobic — Greek aḗr, "air"; traditionally placed in this family on the strength of the semantics, though some etymologists treat aḗr as Pre-Greek; the lower atmosphere named by what moves through it
ocular / monocle / binocular — Latin oculus, "eye"; from the same eye-root through the Latin branch — the eye named by its diminutive form
optic / synopsis / autopsy — Greek ōps, "eye, face"; from the same eye-root through the Greek branch — the seeing-act named by its bodily organ
Cyclops — Greek Kýklōps, "round-eye"; the eye-half of the giant's name is the same root that sits inside window
inoculate — Latin inoculāre, "to graft an eye-bud" (the bud being the oculus of the plant); the modern medical sense narrowed from the agricultural one
occult — Latin occultāre, "to cover, to hide"; from ob- + celāre ("to hide"), folk-associated with oculus because the hidden is what the eye cannot see — the association is not etymological but the resonance is real
windward — Old English wind + the directional suffix -weard ("toward"); the side facing the wind, a native English compound on the same wind-root that sits inside window
winnow — Old English windwian, from wind; the agricultural practice of throwing threshed grain into the wind so the chaff blows away — the wind named as the actor, not the medium