Other forms: windows
A window is the glass part of a wall that you look through. Open the window, a broken window, out of the window.
Window frame, windowsill, window box and shop window are standard. On a computer, a window is a framed area of the screen, and windowing systems are named from it. Figuratively, a window is a limited period of opportunity: a window of opportunity, a two-hour window, the window has closed. Note window shopping; and that windows were taxed in Britain from 1696, which is why some old houses have bricked-up ones.
1nounwindowThe glass part of a wall that you look through.~81%
“Could you open the window? It's really hot in here.”
2nounlimitedA limited period of opportunity.~19%
“There is a two-hour window and then the road closes.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 22 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
window is an opening, or a period.
Old Norse vindauga means wind-eye — vindr, wind, plus auga, eye. Before glass, a window was a hole that let the wind in and the smoke out, and the Norse name says exactly that.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂weh₁-
Middle English
wyndowe
English, today
window
From Middle English wyndowe. From Middle English wyndowe, wyndown, from Old Norse vindauga (“window”) literally “wind-eye; wind-hole”, equivalent to wind + eye. Cognate with Scots windae and windock, Faroese vindeyga, Norwegian Bokmål vindu, Norwegian Nynorsk vindauge, Danish vindue, archaic Swedish vindöga, ovd windog. Displaced native ēagþȳrel (the rare direct descendant is eyethurl (“window, pupil, etc.”)). The “windows” among early Germanic peoples were just unglazed holes (eyes) in the wall or roof that permitted wind to pass through.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA