Of Pupae and Pupils (Minicast)

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

Over on our Facebook page the other day, Raquel from San Francisco told us that recently she’d attended a class on urban gardening.

And in this class, they talked about bees and other insects, and someone mentioned the word pupa, P-U-P-A.

Now, the pupil stage of an insect’s life occurs between the larval stage and adulthood.

While the insect is a pupa, it’s usually immobile, and it’s also encased in a protective covering.

And inside, all these marvelous chemical processes are going on.

The creature’s larval structures are breaking down as it reshapes itself into an adult.

Anyway, Raquel wondered about that word pupa.

Does it have anything to do, she asked, with the word pupil?

As in student, after all, they’re both young and they’re not quite shaped as adults.

So are the words pupa and pupil linguistic relatives?

The answer is yes, indeed they are.

And the connection between these two terms is an illustration of what I like to call the wonderful webbiness of the world of words.

Check this out.

In Latin, the word pupa, spelled P-U-P-A, means girl or doll.

And from the same root, we get the word puppet.

In Latin, a little girl is a pupilla.

And similarly, in Latin, the word pupillus means little boy.

And this Latin word pupillus found its way through Old French into English as the word pupil.

So okay, you might say, but what about the pupil in my eye?

Is that the same one?

Is there any connection with that?

And once again, the answer is yes.

This is so cool.

The pupil in your eye derives from the fact that if you get up really close to someone and look in that person’s eye, you see a reflection of a little doll, right?

Right there in the tiny black circle in the middle of that person’s eye, you see a reflection of yourself.

It’s a little doll, a pupil.

And that’s not all yet.

People in the 16th century sometimes refer to the pupil in one’s eye as the baby or the baby in the eye.

And by the 17th century, lovers were said to look babies at each other when they were gazing dreamily into each other’s eyes.

How about this example from a 1635 play by Thomas Haywood?

She clung about his neck, gave him ten kisses, toyed with his locks, looked babies in his eyes.

Oh, baby, now that’s some hot stuff.

Well, see what I mean about the wonderful webbiness of the world of words?

See what happened?

We went from larvae to lovers in just a few easy etymological steps.

Or would that be entomological steps?

Anyway, do check out our Facebook page.

We’re there under the name Wayword Radio, and we’d love to have you join us.

And you can email us anytime. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Until next time, here’s looking at you.

For A Way with Words, I’m Martha Barnette.