Etymology of the French "les yeux"

Textkit Community Open Board
1

Salvete, omnes/hello everyone.

I assume that the French word “un oeil” vaguely derives from the Latin oculus. However, in Latin, oculus is a regular noun as far as I’m aware, whereas in French, the plural of the equivalent noun “oeil” is completely irregular and is “les yeux”. Can anyone shed some light as to why that may be? Perhaps it’s something to do with Vulgar Latin, I don’t know. I know of a site which gives the etymology of English words, and in addition to that I would be very grateful if anyone could point me in the direction of one for French, as well, if any such thing exists.

Multas gratias ob responda; gratiam habeo ob auxillium.

Jack

2

I’m not sure how much French you know, but the dictionary at http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/ almost always has some etymological information and you can look just at the etymological information by going to http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/

As for yeux, it might be surprising, but like http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/oeil says, the word derives regularly from Latin, with oeil < oculum and yeux < oculos. I don’t know all the details – it involves palatalization which had complicated effects – but I can see that the development of the end of the word is regular – it’s similar to words like cheval < caballum, plural chevaux < caballos. But to get at the details, you need to also know the Old French forms.

3

Thank you for the links, modus.irrealis. My French, although by no means where I want it to be, is more than good enough to benefit from the links you provided.

Multas gratias ob respondum et auxillium. Explicatio tua quoque tres utilis est.

Gratias maximas

Jacobus

4

The word is related to our English eye

5

Salve, Jacobus!

I have also found this link to be very informative about the transition from OCULUS to ŒIL (yes, œ in capitals is Œ and not Oe!) and YEUX.
http://www.languefrancaise.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5992

I find the fifth (last) message to be rather enlightening about how the pronunciation changed with the times.

Ave,
Petrus (Pierre)

6

Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch will solve the etymology of this important word quite exhaustively in 15 pages. Just type »œil» and Bob’s your uncle.