DONKEY EASELS

The word easel (meaning "wooden frame") was borrowed around the turn of the seventeenth century from the Dutch word ezel, meaning "donkey". The definition came about because of a historical association with donkeys carrying a burden and the painting being loaded onto a stand. Ezel is from Middle Dutch esel and Proto-Germanic asil; that traces to Latin asellus, a variant of asinus that had the same definition and was also the source of the English words ass and asinine​. Beyond that, linguists are stumped, but the current theories are that asinus either derives from Proto-Indo-European agros ("field") or a non-IE loanword. Literary usage of the word easel has been relatively constant since the 1800s, and Google searches for it peak every year in December.