Quoting "T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>:
On 6/1/06, Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:The original meaning of the root (in Proto-Indo-European) is pretty clearly 'eye' or 'see', but in Greek it usually means 'face'. From what I know of *Eryops*, the 'face' meaning would certainly seem to make more sense.
My understanding was that it refers to the portion of the face including the eyes and the nose, but not the mouth. (Different languages sometimes parse the human body slightly differently.)
That could well be.
-- Nick Pharris Department of Linguistics University of Michigan
"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."
--Edwin H. Land