Etymology

elm

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Today it means: A tree of the genus Ulmus of the family Ulmaceae, large deciduous trees with alternate stipulate leaves and small apetalous flowers. Full definition →

Middle English elme ← Old English elm ← Proto-West Germanic *elm
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*h₁élem“mountain elm”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*elmaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*elm
  4. Old English · inherited fromelm
  5. Middle English · inherited fromelme
  6. English todayelm

From Middle English elme, elm, from Old English elm, from Proto-West Germanic *elm, from Proto-Germanic *elmaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁élem (“mountain elm”). See also dialectal Low German Elm, dialectal German Ilm, archaic German Ilme, Norwegian and Swedish alm; also Irish leamh, Latin ulmus, Albanian ulzë (“maple”).

Words from the same roots

Old Englishelm all →

AmherstElmbridge

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.