A Tiny Person in Your Eye? How ‘Pupil’ Got Its Two Meanings
Wednesday 27 May 2026 at 00:31
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday 27 May 2026 at 00:48
I expect you've heard the ancient joke about the cross-eyed teacher. He couldn't control his pupils, you see.
I always assumed the two different meanings of pupil evolved independently and their being homonyms is pure accident. But not so! While looking something else up, I found to my astonishment (whatever could the connection be?) they have the same root and their origin is a fascination story.
In Latin there was a word pupus, 'boy' and a feminine form pupa, 'girl'. These had diminutives, pupillus and pupilla, 'little boy' and 'little girl'. These words were used to describe orphans, or young persons under the tutelage of an adult. In French this became pupille and was borrowed into English to simply mean a young student. (A vestige of the tutelage meaning remains when pupil is used to describe a trainee barrister.)
Pupilla also meany 'doll' and this is what the pupil of the eye gets its name from.
If you look into someone's eyes you may see a tiny reflection in their pupils. Light passing through the pupil is absorbed, making the pupil look black, but some light is reflected off its surface and in favourable circumstances you may see a tiny reflected image of yourself - a 'doll'! and pupilla was the name given to this doll.
Fascinatingly Ancient Greek had a word κόρη (kori), 'little girl', and this too was used to mean the pupil of the eye.
This little doll in the eye really exists, although I think you would need a special camera to photograph it, but here is rather nice photo by Vladimer Shioshvili
'Stephanie was looking out through the window, looking at clouds passing...'
And now you can probably make a guess about where puppet and puppy come from.
Picture credit: Vladimer Shioshvili, 17 October 2007, licensed under Creative Common.
A Tiny Person in Your Eye? How ‘Pupil’ Got Its Two Meanings
I expect you've heard the ancient joke about the cross-eyed teacher. He couldn't control his pupils, you see.
I always assumed the two different meanings of pupil evolved independently and their being homonyms is pure accident. But not so! While looking something else up, I found to my astonishment (whatever could the connection be?) they have the same root and their origin is a fascination story.
In Latin there was a word pupus, 'boy' and a feminine form pupa, 'girl'. These had diminutives, pupillus and pupilla, 'little boy' and 'little girl'. These words were used to describe orphans, or young persons under the tutelage of an adult. In French this became pupille and was borrowed into English to simply mean a young student. (A vestige of the tutelage meaning remains when pupil is used to describe a trainee barrister.)
Pupilla also meany 'doll' and this is what the pupil of the eye gets its name from.
If you look into someone's eyes you may see a tiny reflection in their pupils. Light passing through the pupil is absorbed, making the pupil look black, but some light is reflected off its surface and in favourable circumstances you may see a tiny reflected image of yourself - a 'doll'! and pupilla was the name given to this doll.
Fascinatingly Ancient Greek had a word κόρη (kori), 'little girl', and this too was used to mean the pupil of the eye.
This little doll in the eye really exists, although I think you would need a special camera to photograph it, but here is rather nice photo by Vladimer Shioshvili
'Stephanie was looking out through the window, looking at clouds passing...'
And now you can probably make a guess about where puppet and puppy come from.
Picture credit: Vladimer Shioshvili, 17 October 2007, licensed under Creative Common.