Old High German

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 = 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 9783525264058, p. 26.
• Lorenz Diefenbach, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprache, J. Baer, 1851 p. 23.