Meanings
plural eyethurls
- humorousrareA window.
Hark! What light through yonder eyethurl breaks.
1978, Stuart Diamond, Paul S. Lorris, It’s in Your Power: The Concerned Energy Consumer’s Survival Kit, New York, N.Y.: Rawson Associates Publishers, Inc., →ISBN, page 135, column 25 more examples
A kidcote is a special name for a prison. Some kidcotes don’t even have an eyethurl. What is an eyethurl? An eyethurl is a window such as the one through which the lovely Rapunzel let down her crinets. […] Note: For dretching the curly crineted child with a fearbabe, the killbuck was sent to a kidcote without an eyethurl. […] The hardhewer graffed for stone for a knosp / For the door to his cosh, upsy-English with burl; / He theeked it with thatch and stood back to aimcry, / Then shrieked, “Juvament! Hadivist! No eyethurl!”
1977, Susan Kelz Sperling, Poplollies and Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words, New York, N.Y.: Clarkson N. Potter, →ISBN, pages 31 and 53I was watching the sunset through our eyethurl when I heard strange slurping noises just a wurp away.
1979, Susan Kelz Sperling, The New Book of Knowledge Annual 1979, Danbury, Conn.: Grolier, →ISBN, page 319There he saw a bellibone sticking her head out of an eyethurl and crying. […] He threw the rope up to the eyethurl.
1979 September 24, Lauren Calobrisi, “[Fun, Games & Stuff: Kidsday] Story Time: The Kotee and the Bellibone”, in Newsday, Suffolk edition, volume 40, number 22, Long Island, N.Y.: Newsday Inc., part II, page 14Glancing out the eyethurl of her modest cosh, she saw a blue scrow—a good sign for a new day.
1985, Cathryn Berger Kaye, Word Works: Why the Alphabet Is a Kid’s Best Friend (A Brown Paper School Book), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 99, column 1Beware of eyethurls that rob home of cooling and heating energy
1985 March 13, The Central and North Jackson County Star, Kansas City, Mo., page 11B
Origin
Revived from Old English ēagþyrel (possibly for puristic reasons). Popularized by Susan Kelz Sperling’s 1977 book Poplollies and Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words (See quotation). By surface analysis, eye + thurl (“hole”).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
eyethurl. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eyethurl
“eyethurl.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eyethurl. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “eyethurl,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eyethurl.
Source: eyethurl on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.