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DONKEY EASELS

6/29/2020

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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.
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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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