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Both "pupil" the student in
school and the pupil of the eye derive from the same Latin word, but
took quite diverging paths. The Latin word was pupillus which
meant "child", but specifically an orphan child, one who
was under the care of a guardian. This is what the word meant when it
first entered English. In Wycliffe's translation of the Bible in
1382, for instance, people are adjured to "visit pupils and
widows in their tribulacioun". Two hundred years later, in
Shakespeare's time, the word was being used to mean a university
student; by the 19th century it came to be restricted to
schoolchildren.
Meanwhile, the original Latin word was also
developing along other lines. The feminine form was pupilla,
which, as well as meaning "female child", also meant
"doll". The Romans used this word for the opening in the
iris because if you look into the pupils, tiny reflected images can
be seen. The word didn't get borrowed into English in this sense till
the 1500s; before that the pupil was called the "black of the
eye", or the "sight" or "sight-hole", or,
way back in Old English, "the apple of the eye". .The
figurative use of "the apple of someone's eye" dates all
the way back to King Alfred the Great's time.
Teachers will no doubt be entertained to learn that the word "student", defined in its first sense in the Oxford English Dictionary as "A person who is engaged in or addicted to study" ("addicted"??), is derived from the Latin word studēre (to be eager, zealous, or diligent at studying; to seek to be helpful).
Although the language distinguished between students at university and pupils in lower education, starting in about 1900 in the US, the word "student" came to be used of all levels of instruction.
Although the language distinguished between students at university and pupils in lower education, starting in about 1900 in the US, the word "student" came to be used of all levels of instruction.
For the origin of the word "truant", see this post:
For the origin of the word "school", see this post:
Would you enjoy talking about words with Wordlady over many, many glasses of wine? Why not check out my trip to Bordeaux and Toulouse in July 2017. Unlike most of my Tours en l'air trips, this is more about food, wine, and sightseeing than about ballet (though there is some of that too). BOOKING NOW, SIGNUP DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 20. More info here:
http://toursenlair.blogspot.ca/2016/08/toulouse-bordeaux-ballet-trip-july-2017.html
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Hello, Katherine.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Benjamin Madeira. I am a Guatemalan guy, but I am living in Norway. I am currently studying the English language at a University in that Scandinavian country.
I came across your blog by searching online which blog had won the "Love English Awards" in 2013, and I found "the link of your blog-spot".
I found all about the words "pupil" and "student" in youtr post very insighful.
When I was a child, my first teacher advised his "pupils", to behave us as "students" and not as "alumnos" (Spanish word for "pupils". And then he went on to explain us that the word "alumno" meant "a person without light".
If he were alive today I would refute his theory. There is a popular urban legend in Spanish speaking countries, desguised as "ethimology", which is absurd, saying that "alumno" ["alumnus"], is a compound word: the negative "a" (from Greek, not from Latin) and "lumen", meaning "light"; and that the Spanish ending "-no" ["alumNO"] makes it obvious that it means "without". Thus, "alumno" ["pupil"] would mean "he/she who has no light", or "he/she who is not illuminated".
We know that in Latin they did not compound words mixing Greek and Latin stems. Therefore, it does not make sense. We have to notice as well that the Latin word ends in -nus, which has nothing to do with the Latin negative non.
Now, what can you comment on the word "alumni" that we use in English?
As you know "alumnus" and "alumna" both came from Latin and preserve Latin plurals. "Alumnus" is a masculine noun whose plural is "alumni", and "alumna" is a feminine noun whose plural is "alumnae". Coeducational institutions usually use "alumni" for graduates of both sexes. But those who object to masculine forms in such cases may prefer the phrase "alumni" and "alumnae" or the form "alumnae/i", which is the choice of many women's colleges that have begun to admit men.
Finally, my question: what can you comment on these terms? Why do you think or know that they are still used as in Latin? Why did they not develop the same way as "pupil" and "student"?