HOUR WATCHER

The word horoscope is pretty cool because it's a classical borrowing from before the Norman Conquest. Through Old French, it traces to Latin horoscopus and Ancient Greek horoskopos, which still meant the same thing but can be more literally translated as "hour-watcher". That's because the first part, hora, meant "hour" or "season", and the second part, skopos, meant "one who watches". Hora, also the root of the English word "hour", eventually derives from Proto-Indo-European yeh, which could refer to many different types of time periods but is notable for being the etymon of "year". Skopos, meanwhile, was the nominative singular form of a noun derived from the verb skeptomai, "to observe"; that, through Proto-Hellenic, derives from Proto-Indo-European spek, with the same definition.