elk

Etymology

The history of the word is unclear.^[2][3] It is probably inherited from Middle English elk,^[4] inherited from Old English eolh, also elh and eolc,^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} with k in place of the Old English h sound;^[7][8] Barnhart and Weekley put the change down to Anglo-French speakers or scribes.^[11][12][13] The OED notes that the modern word is not the regular descendant of the Old English one and thinks it probably from Middle High German elch, the later form of Old High German elaho.^[2][14][13] Ayto points to the long gap in the record between Old English and the late 15th century and suggests a borrowing from Old Norse,^[3] and Klein derives it from Old Norse elgr.^[15] Kroonen also finds the final k of the continental forms unexpected, and explains it either as a borrowing from North Germanic or as coming from the oblique stem of an n-stem noun.^[16] The Old English and Old High German words go back to Proto-Germanic *elhaz,^[13][16] an ablaut variant of *algiz, the ancestor of the Norse word,^[16][3][11] from an Indo-European base Proto-Indo-European *elḱ- beside *olḱ-,^[11][15][13] perhaps from *el- (“red, brown”), after the animal's colour.^[13][11][15] Related words for deer or elk include German Elch, Russian лось (losʹ) and Czech los,^[13][6][15] and the same base is behind eland.^[3][15] Latin alcēs and Ancient Greek ἄλκη (álkē) were probably borrowed from Germanic.^[13][11][15]

Earliest recorded meaning

The European elk, Alces alces: the Middle English Dictionary quotes elkys among bucks and harts about 1450,^[4] and the OED's first record is the Boke of St Albans (1486).^[2] Barnhart dates the word probably before 1437, with earlier records as a surname,^[11] such as Willielmus le Elk (1279).^[4]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) described the elk as "a large and stately animal of the stag kind".^[17] In North America the name was given to similar-looking but unrelated animals,^[13] above all the wapiti, so that in American use elk means the wapiti and the European elk is called a moose.^[18][19] The OED also records it for the extinct Irish elk and other deer (1884), for the sambar in Anglo-Indian use (1884), and for the eland, or Cape elk (1731).^[2] With a capital, Elks are the members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, founded in New York City in 1868, originally as a society of actors and writers (recorded from 1879).^[2][13] Collins also has elk for a strong, pliable leather made from calfskin or horsehide.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – the European elk, in a Middle English poem.^[4]
• 1486 – elk, in the Boke of St Albans.^[2]
• 1731 – the eland, or Cape elk.^[2]
• 1879 – Elks, members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.^[2]
• 1884 – the Irish elk and other deer; the sambar in India.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The largest living deer, Alces alces, of northern Europe and Asia, with broad, flat antlers; in North America called the moose.^[18][19][2]
2. (North America) The wapiti, a large deer with branching antlers.^[18][19]
3. A strong, pliable leather made from calfskin or horsehide.^[18]
4. Elk: a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, an American fraternal society.^[2][13]

Word family

• elkhound

Related words

• eland

Usage notes

The plural is elk or elks.^[18][19] Two other words elk, both of unknown origin and both obsolete, are recorded by the OED: a wild swan or wild goose (1552–1839), still used in some dialects of Ireland, northern England and Norfolk,^{[2][7][20][19]} and a kind of wood for bows, in statutes of 1541–1607.^[2]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
4. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ a b c d e f Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
16. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
19. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
20. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)