Window

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈwɪndəʊ/

Definitions

1. An opening in a wall or roof that is fitted with glass to admit light and allow people to see out
2. A framed opening in a building, typically filled with glass, allowing light to enter and providing a view of the exterior landscape
3. An architectural feature that consists of a transparent barrier which lets in light and offers a view of the outside surroundings

Etymology: Every time you close a window against a draught, you are shutting an eye that was named for letting the wind in. The Vikings called an opening in a wall or roof a "vindauga," a "wind-eye": a bare hole, with no glass in it, through which light and air entered. Both halves of the compound are very old. "Vindr," wind, goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to blow," and "auga," eye, to a root meaning "to see." That second root also reached English by other roads. It is inherited directly in "eye," and it was borrowed later through Latin in "ocular" and "binocular" and through Greek in "optic" and "autopsy." The Norse compound itself never died at home. It is Danish "vindue," Norwegian "vindu" and "vindauge," and Faroese "vindeyga," and in Icelandic it is still "vindauga," the same form as the Old Norse word. The English did not lack a word of their own. Old English had "ēagþyrel," "eye-hole," and "ēagduru," "eye-door." The "þyrel" element, meaning a hole or perforation, also survives in "nostril," originally a "nose-hole." But Norse settlers in northern and eastern England brought "vindauga" with them, and by about 1200 it appears in Middle English as "windou," "windoge" and "windowe." The borrowing drove out the native words almost completely. Their sole survivor, "eyethurl," lives on only as a rare word. The eye in the wall was a widespread image. The Goths, whose language survives mainly in a fourth-century Bible translation, said "augadaurō," "eye-door." The Slavs also took their word from "eye," which is why the Russian is "okno." Speakers of late Latin went the other way and named the opening after the wind, from "ventus," which gives Spanish "ventana." The Norse word is unusual because it holds both ideas at once: the hole the wind comes through and the eye that looks out. Then came glass. The Romans had glazed openings and a word for them, "fenestra." As framed and glazed windows spread through northern Europe, many Germanic languages took up the Latin word along with the new technology, which is why German has "Fenster" and Dutch "venster." English nearly followed. "Fenester," borrowed through French, was used alongside the Norse word until about the middle of the sixteenth century. Then it faded, and the old wind-hole survived. English is left with a word for a pane of glass that names the very thing the glass was put there to keep out.

Synonyms: pane, opening, view, aperture, vent

Antonyms: door, wall, blockage, obstruction, closure