late 12c., "the action of looking," verbal noun from look (v.). From late 13c. as "look in the eyes, facial expression;" also "personal appearance, aspect." Looking-glass is from 1520s. The noun looking-in (1926) was an old expression for "television viewing."
Old English glæs "glass; a glass vessel," from Proto-Germanic *glasam "glass" (source also of Old Saxon glas, Middle Dutch and Dutch glas, German Glas, Old Norse gler "glass, looking glass," Danish glar), from PIE root *ghel- (2) "to shine," with derivatives denoting bright colors or materials. The PIE root also is the ancestor of widespread words for gray, blue, green, and yellow, such as Old English glær "amber," Latin glaesum "amber" (which might be from Germanic), Old Irish glass "green, blue, gray," Welsh glas "blue."
Restricted sense of "drinking glass" is from early 13c. and now excludes other glass vessels. Meaning "a glass mirror" is from 14c. Meaning "glass filled with running sand to measure time" is from 1550s; meaning "observing instrument" is from 1610s.
Old English glæs, from glass (v.). Middle English also had an adjective glazen, from Old English glæsen. The glass snake (1736, actually a limbless lizard) is so called for the fragility of its tail. The glass slipper in "Cinderella" perhaps is an error by Charles Perrault, translating in 1697, mistaking Old French voir "ermine, fur" for verre "glass." In other versions of the tale it is a fur slipper. The proverb about people in glass houses throwing stones is attested by 1779, but earlier forms go back to 17c.:
Who hath glass-windows of his own must take heed how he throws stones at his house. ... He that hath a body made of glass must not throw stones at another. [John Ray, "Handbook of Proverbs," 1670]
Glass-house is from late 14c. as "glass factory," 1838 as "greenhouse."
late 14c., "to fit with glass;" 1570s, "to cover with glass," from glass (n.). Related: Glassed; glassing.
Old English self, sylf (West Saxon), seolf (Anglian), "one's own person, -self; own, personal; same, identical," from Proto-Germanic *selbaz (source also of Old Norse sjalfr, Old Frisian self, Dutch zelf, Old High German selb, German selb, selbst, Gothic silba), Proto-Germanic *selbaz "self," from PIE *sel-bho-, suffixed form of root *s(w)e-, pronoun of the third person and reflexive (referring back to the subject of a sentence), also used in forms denoting the speaker's social group, "(we our-)selves" (see idiom).
Its use as the second element in compounded reflexive pronouns (herself, etc.) was in Old English, from the original independent (and inflected) use of self following personal pronouns, as in ic selfa "myself," min selfes "of myself." With a merging of accusative, dative, and genitive cases.
As a noun from c. 1200 as "the person or thing previously specified;" early 14c. as "a person in relation to that same person." G.M. Hopkins used selve as a verb, "become or cause to become a unique self" (1880) but its use seems to have been restricted to poets.
1680s, "aware of one's action or oneself," a word of the English Enlightenment (Locke was using it by 1690, along with self-consciousness "state of being aware of oneself, consciousness of one's own identity"), from self- + conscious. The morbid sense of "preoccupied with one's own personality, conscious of oneself as an object of observation to others" is attested by 1834 (J.S. Mill). Related: Self-consciously.
