The English verb ‘to see’ is very distantly related to the verb ‘to sue’ – and also to ‘segue’, ‘second’ and ‘sequence’.

Via Germanic and Latin, they all come from a Proto-Indo-European root whose meaning can be reconstructed as “to follow”.

In Germanic, this meaning shifted to “to follow with the eyes”.

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As the graphic shows, the Proto-Indo-European root that’s at the basis of these words is *sekʷ- (“to follow”). Through derivatives of its Latin ... 1/