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Susie Dent (@susie_dent) on X

Etymology of the day: ‘window’ was a gift from the Vikings, whose word for a hole in a wall or roof was ‘vindauga’: ‘eye of the wind’. Before ‘window’, the Anglo-Saxons used ‘eye-thirl’, in which ‘thirl’ meant ‘hole’: hence ‘nose-thirls’ or ‘nostrils’, ‘nose holes’.