means A particular position or perspective from which something is observed, considered, or judged — either literally where you're standing or how you see an issue.

from A transparent compound of "view" plus "point," stitched together in English. "View" came through Old French from Latin "videre," to see; "point" likewise traces to Latin "punctum," a pricked mark or spot. So a viewpoint is, almost literally, the "seeing-spot" — the place you plant yourself to look. It began as a physical thing, a vantage on a hill, before drifting into the figurative sense of a mental stance, the way "standpoint" did around the same era.