Etymology Blog

A PUPIL OF ETYMOLOGY

5/7/2017

While working on my eye infographic, I stumbled into the interesting question of whether the words pupil (meaning "student") and pupil (the part of the eye) are related. Turns out that the story is quite interesting. The first definition of pupil came from the French word pupille, which meant "orphan", since many orphans became students, supposedly? This is from its Latin etymon pupillus, with the same meaning. This is a diminutive of the earlier word pupus, or"boy". Pupil meaning "the part of the eye", however, derives from the French homonym of the previous word pupille, which in this case meant "little doll", so named because of the tiny reflections of people you see when looking into someone's pupil. This is from Latin pupa ("girl"), which, unsurprisingly, is the feminine form of the word pupus, "boy" (the word pupa, incidentally, is in English, meaning "maggot". This ties into my past infographics because that was coined by Linnaeus) . Now that we've joined the two words, pupus goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root pehw, meaning "little". How FASCINATING!

6 Comments

Earth Badu

11/16/2018 09:36:30 pm

Wow, I can't believe this doesn't have any comments!;what's wrong with people?
I was actually thinking the samething.

Your anatomy of the eye conveys that it's deeper than just the physical matter of this world. The words used and interpretations express just that. It's up to us to use our brains to decipher these bianary codes and see our illusions for what they are.

We are pupils in adolescents... learning ythe lessons bc our eyes and senses are our teachers, we are in a universal school. #pupil.

Thnx for the share.

David and Leon Fitzjarrald

11/30/2018 06:44:50 am

Leon and I have discovered that, in the Latin languages, the word for 'compass' (as in finding directions) derives from the Latin for a "small box". French: boussoule; Portuguese: bússola; Spanish: brújula (no link to witch).

So for these people, this important item is described by
"the box it comes in."

Adam Aleksic link

11/30/2018 04:19:56 pm

Thank you! I'll have to do a post on that!

Naseem Chappelle

7/12/2019 01:25:59 am

This research does not fill my inquiry especially because I found that in the classical Arabic language, the word "pupil" (تلميذ [tilmeeth]) has an alternate meaning, "student". Which is the same for the English word "pupil". Therefore the origin of this dual meaning must go back further than French.

julian holman

9/28/2019 12:37:29 pm

according to Roberto Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, the double meaning of pupil and eye is also in ancient greek. Then consider the tale of Narcissus, and how the pool-mirror is like the pupil of the underworld

Jeff R

8/28/2021 11:04:12 pm

As a biologist, I feel compelled to correct your definition of "pupa." It does not mean "maggot." Certain types of insects, including butterflies, moths, fruit flies, house flies, bees, wasps, and ants, have four distinct life stages: (1) egg, (2) larva, (3) pupa, and (4) imago (adult). The "pupa" is the transitional stage between the immature larval form and the mature imago/adult form.

Non-biologists (and most biologists) are typically familiar with the life stages of butterflies to some extent, so I'll start there. After the egg stage, the caterpillar is the larval stage (stage 2) of butterflies. Once a caterpillar reaches a certain point in its growth and development, the larval stage ends and the pupal stage (stage 3) begins. The butterfly pupa is often referred to using the specialized term "chrysalis." During the pupal stage, the chrysalis spins a silk shell called a cocoon around its body in order to protect itself while it is largely dormant and vulnerable to predators during metamorphosis. Inside the cocoon, the chrysalis (pupa) transforms into its adult form, and at the end of the pupal stage, the mature form of the insect (imago/adult) emerges from the cocoon -- this form is what we think of as a "butterfly," but it's merely the final life stage for this organism.

Please note the difference between the terms pupa/chrysalis and cocoon: the pupa/chrysalis refers to the organism (butterfly) itself during the pupal stage; in contrast, the cocoon is an external silk shell that the chrysalis spins around its body. (The cocoon is no more a part of the butterfly pupa's body than a spider's web is a part of the spider's body.)

Flies (such as fruit flies or house flies) undergo the same four developmental stages as do butterflies. For flies, the larval stage (stage 2) is often called a "maggot." When people are talking about maggots, they are referring specifically to fly larvae, not the larvae of butterflies or other types of insects. Depending on the species of fly, the larvae will have a specialized diet: for some, it's the yeast the grows on decaying fruit; for others, it's decaying flesh, stools, etc. -- they are nature's decomposers! The third stage for flies is called a pupa. (The term chrysalis is used specifically for butterflies and sometimes for certain species of moths, but certainly not for flies.) At the end of the pupal stage, the adult fly emerges from its cocoon - this is the fly that you see hovering around ripe bananas, or the fly that likes to land on your aunt's potato salad at the summer picnic.

So, in summary: "pupa" is a general term for the third life stage of certain insect species, including butterflies, moths, fruit flies, house flies, bees, wasps, and ants. In contrast, "maggot" is a term often reserved for the larva (second life stage) specifically of flies. One would not, for example, refer to the larval form of a butterfly as a "maggot;" it is called a caterpillar. Nor is the pupal form of a butterfly called a "maggot," as you claimed; it is a chrysalis.

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A PUPIL OF ETYMOLOGY

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