The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

The Human Body

The body, by virtue of proximity, is the source of at least a thousand and one words and phrases. There’s barely a part of you left that hasn’t been made into some sort of verb. Most, like heading off, or stomaching criticism, are obvious. Some are less so. Footing the bill, for example, is a strange phrase until you remember basic arithmetic. You compile a bill by writing down the various charges in a column and then working out the total, which you write at the foot of the column. At this point you may find that you are paying through the nose, which seems to be a reference to the pain of a nosebleed.

There are phrases based on parts of the body that you probably didn’t know you had. The heart strings, for example, upon which people so often play and tug are actual and vital parts of your heart. The medical name for them is the chordae tendineae, and if anyone ever actually pulled on them it would at least cause an arrhythmia and probably kill you.

There are words that don’t appear to have anything to do with the body but do, like window, which was originally a wind-eye, because, though you can look out through it like an eye, in the days before glass the wind could get in.

There’s more in your eye than meets the eye. For a start there are apples. Early anatomists thought that the centre of the eye was a solid that appeared to be shaped like an apple, hence the apple of your eye. These days it has an even stranger name. It’s called a pupil. And, yes, that’s the same sort of pupil you have in a school.

In Latin a little boy was called a pupus and a little girl was called a pupa (which is also where we get pupae for baby insects). When they went to school they became school pupils. Now gaze deeply into somebody’s eyes. Anyone will do. What do you see? You ought to see a tiny reflection of yourself gazing back. This little version of you seems like a child, and that’s why it’s a pupil.

But the part of your body that has the most words named after it is the hand.