pupil
Pluralpupils
- 1The opening in the middle of the iris through which light passes to reach the retina.
Her pupils widened as she stepped from the bright hall into the dark room.
The optometrist measured how quickly each pupil contracted under the lamp.
Note
The eye's pupil has its own Latin source: pūpilla, "little girl, doll." It was named for the tiny figure you see reflected when you look into someone's eye. The verbs that go with it are dilate, contract and widen. Its shape can be described too: Richard Ellis's The Book of Sharks (1983) contrasts sharks with round pupils and sharks with slitlike ones.
- 2A learner at a school, taught and supervised by a teacher.
Each pupil was expected to wear the school uniform.
The teacher praised her pupils for their progress this term.
Similarstudent, schoolchild, learner
Oppositeteacher
Note
A word most at home in the British classroom. Outside the UK it now sounds dated, and student is the usual word there. A 2013 article in The Guardian Weekly still writes of sorting pupils as plain everyday English. Behind it sits Latin pūpillus, "orphan, minor," from pūpus, "child, boy." It is a different word, which came by a different road, from the pupil of the eye.
- 3A person who studies under the personal guidance of a renowned expert in a field.
The composer's most gifted pupil went on to write symphonies of her own.
Many of the surgeon's former pupils now lead hospitals around the world.
Similarstudent, disciple, apprentice
Note
Here the word is defined by the master rather than the school. It usually comes with a possessive naming the teacher: Socrates' pupil, Plato's pupil. That line of descent, from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, is the classic picture. The word implies personal teaching and a lineage passed from one mind to the next, not simply a place in a class.
- 4The dark central area of an eyespot: a round, eye-like marking on an animal's body.
The moth's wing spots each show a pale pupil ringed with brown.
Zoologists noted the deep blue pupils at the center of the fish's markings.
Note
Zoology carries the eye's vocabulary over to markings that only imitate an eye. On a moth's wing or a fish's flank, the dark center of such a spot is its pupil, just as the dark center of a real eye is the opening in the iris. The word belongs to descriptions of animal patterning. The matching adjective for a surface marked this way is ocellated.
Less common meaning
- 5An orphaned minor placed under the protection and care of the state.
The magistrate declared the orphaned child a pupil of the crown.
Guardians were appointed to manage the property of the city's pupils.
Note
A legal use, now obsolete, that stays closest to the orphan behind the schoolroom word. Anglo-Norman pupille still meant "orphan." A pupil in this sense was protected rather than taught. Modern writers use ward for the idea. Pupil in this meaning belongs only in historical or legal-historical writing, and it needs a word of explanation when quoted.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English pupille, from Anglo-Norman pupille ("orphan"), from Latin pūpillus ("orphan, minor"), a variant of pūpulus ("little boy"), from pūpus ("child, boy").
From Middle English pupille, from Old French pupille, from Latin pūpilla ("pupil; little girl, doll"), so named because of the small reflected image seen when looking into someone's eye.