window

ˈwin-(ˌ)dō

Old Norse vindauga is built from two words: wind and eye.

Try window in the lookup

Fills the word field on the homepage. Nothing is sent until you submit.

Partly open teal wood window with a brass latch and breeze-lifted linen curtain. — Decorative illustration

One possible route

The sequence below follows the cited Merriam-Webster entry.

A word routeLanguage forms named in the cited Merriam-Webster entry

Old Norse componentsvindr + augawind + eye, forming vindauga
Old Norsevindaugaliterally, wind-eye
Middle Englishwindowean opening for light and air
Englishwindowfirst known use (Merriam-Webster, sense 1a)13th century

An opening becomes a wind-eye

The dictionaries trace English window through Middle English windowe to Old Norse vindauga — vindr, “wind,” plus auga, “eye” — and Merriam-Webster places the English word in the 13th century. The American Heritage Dictionary calls the compound a kenning, the compressed metaphor Norse and Old English poets used for things like a “sea-steed” (a ship) or a “whale-road” (the sea): here, a wind-eye for a hole the wind came through.

This page summarizes the cited dictionary entries. Follow each source for its full wording, notes and references.

More from the cited entries

Word-specific details from the linked dictionaries, with the dictionary named beside each claim.

The words it replaced

English already had its own compounds before the Norse one took over: eagþyrl, “eye-hole,” and eagduru, “eye-door,” while Old Frisian used andern, etymologically “breath-door.” The Online Etymology Dictionary notes the word originally referred to an unglazed hole in a roof — the “eye” faced the weather, not a pane.

English even ran a rival in parallel: Latin fenestra supplied German Fenster and Swedish fönster, and English used fenester alongside window until the mid-16th century before the Norse form won.

Kin, not the borrowing path

The two elements are documented plainly: vindr, “wind,” plus auga, “eye.” The Norse compound displaced Old English's own words for the opening — eagþyrl, “eye-hole,” and eagduru, “eye-door” — so the modern word kept the eye where English once also pictured a door.

On the route itself the cited dictionaries differ in confidence. Merriam-Webster derives window directly through Old Norse vindauga. The American Heritage Dictionary credits the word to the Scandinavian settlers but notes there is no record of the exact form they gave English — only that it was related to vindauga. And the Old English words wind and ēage are kin to the Norse parts: cognates, not links in the borrowing chain.

New senses, new windows

The Online Etymology Dictionary's dated compounds chart the word's spread: window seat (1778), window dressing for shop displays (1853, figurative by 1898), window-shopping (1904), and window of opportunity (1979), which grew out of the space program's launch window (1963). The American Heritage Dictionary's sense list adds the computing window and the atmospheric electromagnetic “window” — the word kept extending to any framed opening, literal or not.

Defenestration, “the action of throwing out of a window,” is dated 1620 and built on the rival Latin root fenestra; the Online Etymology Dictionary entry ties it to the 1618 event in Prague in which deputies and a secretary were thrown from a window.

Keep following words

Continue with another source-linked example.

All ten examples