erchan

Old High German

Etymology

Apparently from Proto-Germanic *erknaz, thus cognate with 𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌺𐌽𐍃 (airkns, “holy, pure (of faith)”) and Old English eorcnanstan (“precious stone, gem”) (see eorcnan, erce). An archaic Germanic word from the sacral sphere, its original meaning is difficult to reconstruct as it belonged to the pagan religious vocabulary obscured after Christianization.

Pokorny (1959) tentatively groups the word with Proto-Indo-European *h₂erǵ- (“glittering, white”) (compare Ancient Greek ἀργός (argós), Latin argentum), but Gothic 𐌰𐍂𐌺- (ark-) may also be an early loan of (ἀρχι- (arkhi-, “archi-”)); compare Ulfilan 𐌰𐍂𐌺𐌰𐌲𐌲𐌹𐌻𐌿𐍃 (arkaggilus) for archangelus.

Adjective

erchan

1. sublime, chief, special, egregious, genuine, true (?)
   • der erchano sangheri (=egregius psaltes, Isaiah 4:2)
   • ercna euua (=certa lege Isaiah 2:1)
   • allero specierum erchenosta (=speciem specialissimam)
   • Also ih tes mennisken boteh einen toten mennisken heizo, nals nicht erchenen mennisken (Notker trans. Boethius 5[1] = Nam uti cadauer hominem mortuum dixeris, simpliciter uero hominem appellare non possis "For though you might call a cadaver 'a dead man', you cannot just simply call it 'a man' [viz. it is not genuinely a man].")

Derived terms

• erchanpruoder (“full brother, germanus”)

Descendants

• German: Erchtag (“Tuesday”) (archaic, Bavarian)

References

• Eberhard Gottlieb Graff, Hans Ferdinand Massmann, Althochdeutscher Sprachschatz, oder, Wörterbuch der althochdeutschen Sprache, 1834, p. 468.
• Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (1835, trans. Stallybrass 1888), 113; 182—185.
• Bopp, Comparative Grammar (1815, trans. Eastwick 1862), p. 1285.
• Hjalmar Falk, Alf Torp, Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit, part 3, 5th ed., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979, →ISBN, p. 26.
• Lorenz Diefenbach, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprache, J. Baer, 1851 p. 23.