Two meanings that look — a child in a classroom, and the black circle in an eye — meet in one small idea: littleness. Latin used a diminutive, 'little one', for a child in someone's care, and the same word for the doll-sized reflection of yourself that you can see in another person's eye. Knowing that, the two senses stop feeling like an accident.
From the word’s history
Both senses go back to Latin pupillus/pupilla 'orphan child, ward, minor', a diminutive. The eye sense comes from pupilla 'little girl-doll', named for the tiny image of yourself reflected in another person's eye — Greek did the same thing with kore 'girl', used for both a doll and the pupil of the eye.
兩個意思都回到拉丁文 pupillus／pupilla（受監護的孩子、未成年者），本身是個表示「小」的指小詞。眼睛那一層來自 pupilla「小女娃娃」——因為你在別人眼睛裡會看到一個娃娃般大小的自己。希臘文的做法一模一樣：kore（女孩）同時用來指洋娃娃和瞳孔。所以這兩個意思不是同形異義，而是同一個「小小的那個」分了兩條路。
Etymonline, https://www.etymonline.com/word/pupil
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
pupilnoun詞源 1/ˈpjuːpəl/
- 1
A learner at a school under the supervision of a teacher.
- The Pupil after his Pupillarity, had granted a Diſcharge to one of the Co-tutors, which did extinguiſh the whole Debt of that Co-tutor, and conſequently of all the reſt, they being all correi debendi, lyable by one individual Obligation, which cannot be Diſcharged as to one, and ſtand as to all the reſt.
- All of these different methods of teaching elementary reading were successful for some pupils, unsuccessful for others.
- 2
One who studies under supervision of a renowned expert in their field.
- Plato was Socrates' pupil, and in turn Aristotle was Plato's pupil.
- I understand; it’s because I seem to you to be a worse pupil than the judges in court, because obviously you’ll demonstrate to them that the sorts of things your father did are unjust and hated by all the gods.
- 3
obsoletelawAn orphan who is a minor and under the protection of the state.
pupilnoun詞源 2/ˈpjuːpəl/
- 1
anatomymedicinesciencesThe hole in the middle of the iris of the eye, through which light passes to be focused on the retina.
- There are sharks with round pupils, sharks with slitlike pupils, and some with pupils that expand and contract with the amount of light available. As unimpressive as this might sound to people who are used to having their pupils dilate and contract regularly, realize that no bony fish has this modification of the eye.
- 2
biologynatural-scienceszoologyThe central dark part of an ocellated spot.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。