Als Dialect essel and the Alsisk Ordsamling

An etymology proposed in Alsisk Ordsamling ([Als Dialect Word Collection], 1988) for a word in the Danish dialect of Als, an island immediately east of the Sundeved region of southern Jutland, is critiqued. It is shown that essel 'terrible, powerful' cannot be equated with Anglian Danish elst 'disgusting, unpleasant' by phonological form, meaning, or usage; essel, which is found as an intensive in both positive & negative senses, is claimed to be a development of a hypothetical es(e)lig, a byform of aeslig 'unworthy, disgraceful', originally derived from Low German esel 'donkey'; parallel developments of meaning are cited from Standard Danish & from Low German. 8 References. J. Hitchcock