Students need a “push” in more ways than one.
School’s back in session, and this year, I’m a teacher for it with a classroom all my own.
Grade 6 is my level. English Language Arts is my subject. And not a class goes by, not a single class, without some—OK, several—etymological musings.
And we’re just two days into the school year, folks.
On the first day alone, I treated one bell to a story about the phrase polysyllabic prestidigitation, an impromptu mini-lesson on the trans- in transition, a sidebar on how umbrella is literally “little shadow,” and a promise to tell one young man how his name Guy came to be.
And I’ve been asked more than once—probably due to something that’s been going around online—whether orange the color or orange the fruit came first. My students don’t know who they are dealing with here. (It’s the fruit, as far as words go.)
But what about the origins of the words for that central scholastic dyad, teacher and student? Where do they come from?
Take out your notebooks, class.
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Teacher etymology
The oldest recorded sense of the word teacher—found in 1290—might not mean what you think it does. It means “pointer finger.” That’s because the original sense of the word teach in English is “to show, point out, present, direct.”
(This won’t be the only time we encounter fingers in this story.)
Teach comes from the Old English tǽcan, pronounced like “tachen.” Its past tense and past participle were tǽhte, which became taught. Already in Old English teach was writing on the semantic chalkboard. From its core sense of “show,” it developed into “show by way of information and instruction.”
For my grammar nerds: Before English lost most of its endings, what you taught took the accusative case; who you taught, the dative.
Combined with the suffix -er, teach yields teacher, which is evidenced in its usual sense—for “one who gives instruction, especially in a school”—by the 1380s.
The Old English tǽcan learned from the Proto-Germanic *taikjan, and before it, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *deik-, “to show, pronounce.” As the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (AHD) notes, derivatives of *deik– often concern the directing of words and objects.
Take the Latin dicere, “to say, tell,” source of dictate, diction, dictionary, and many more words in English. Closely—and perhaps surprisingly—related are such words index, judge, preach, and vendetta.
Speaking of index, another derivative of *deik– may be digit, via Latin digitus, “finger, toe,” which was extended to numerals—and, much later, computers.
And speaking of toe, that word, from the Old English tá, is also thought to stand upon the PIE *deik– in its Germanic lineage. As does token—originally a “sign, something that serves to indicate”—from the Old English tácen, pronounced like “tahken.”
The Greek descendants of *deik- in English yield a more academic set of words, including deixis, paradigm, policy, and theodicy.
Student etymology
The origin of student, meanwhile, might compel you to ask, “Did a teacher come up with this?”
Student is rooted in the Latin studēre, “to strive after, concentrate on, apply oneself, be diligent.” A form of this verb, studēns, took the stem of student-, which evolved into the French estudiant. Lopping off the initial e, English borrowed estudiant by at least the late 1300s.
The loss of that initial e—a process known as aphesis—was probably influenced by study. Via French, study comes from the Latin studium, “earnest application, enthusiasm, eagerness, pursuit, intellectual activity.” The Latin studium also takes its seat in studēre.
My fellow teachers, we can dream!
As a noun, study is recorded by around 1300, but its verb form is attested all the way back in Old English.
The development of student in English is a little unexpected. Its earliest sense, back in the late 1300s, denoted “a person engaged in the pursuit of knowledge.” By the mid-1400s, it jumped to “a person studying at a university.” It’s not until the 1760s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, that student is attested for a person studying at lower levels of schooling!
Pupil and learn origins
This won’t be on the test:
What were we calling such students before this? I suspect the principal word in primary and secondary schools had been pupil, from pūpulus, a diminutive of the Latin pūpus, “boy, child.”
Its feminine counterpart, pūpa, “girl,” formed pūpilla, “little girl, doll.” Pūpilla gives us the other pupil, as in the opening of the iris in the eye. Ever look into someone else’s pupil and notice a small reflection of yourself? That “little doll” of an image gives pupil its name!
(I haven’t deployed this tidbit in class yet.)
Before pupil were such native Old English words as leornung-cild and leornung-mann. I suspect you don’t need a teacher to learn those words. There was also leornung-cniht, literally a “learning boy.” Cniht became knight, though the word originally meant “boy, youth, servant.”
Learn, for its part, traces back to the Old English leornian—and long before it, the Proto-Indo-European *leis-, “track, furrow.” Ancient Germanic pursued that root metaphorically into a verb for “to follow a course of study.” The verb last and the noun lore are both related.
As is delirium, literally “gone out of the furrow, off the straight” in Latin.
Speaking of digressing and deviating …
Back to our desks
The deeper root of studēre is held to be the PIE *(s)teu-, with senses of “to push, stick, knock, beat.” Here, the AHD notes that derivatives refer to projecting objects, fragments, and related expressive notions.
Along the Germanic branch, *(s)teu- may have produced steep, steeple, stint, stock, stoker, stub, stucco, and stutter.
The Italic branch—due to all sorts of lexical contortions and, ahem, French—lacks that Germanic st- staccato ostinato, but it still certainly puts on a show. Pierce, obtuse, stupid, tweezers (!), and more redound back to that root *(s)teu- via Latin.
Via Greek, *(s)teu- yields type and its many-faced kin, from typical to typography.
How do we go from “to push” to “a person who is studying?” The underlying metaphor of student is to “press forward,” hence “to strive.”
Want to earn some extra credit? Brush up on why school, like student, also has an origin that seems cooked up by teachers.
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