Other forms: pupils
The pupil is the black circle in the middle of your eye. It grows in the dark and shrinks in bright light.
It is not really black or a thing at all, but a hole letting light into the eye, and the darkness is simply the inside. Doctors check whether pupils respond to light because it tells them a great deal about the brain. The word has an entirely separate meaning, since a pupil is also a child at school, and British schools use the word where Americans say student.
Both pupils are the same word. Latin pūpillus meant an orphan or a minor, from pūpus, a child, and the word for a little one was given to the small dark centre of the eye as readily as to the child at a desk.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂w-
Latin
pūpillus — orphan, minor
Anglo-Norman
pupille — orphan
Middle English
pupille
English, today
pupil
Built from
From Middle English pupille, from Anglo-Norman pupille (“orphan”), from Latin pūpillus (“orphan, minor”), variant of pūpulus (“little boy”), from pūpus (“child, boy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 16 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word