horst

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Horst (“heap, mass, cluster; thicket”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} to which E. Suess gave its geological sense in 1883, in “Antlitz der Erde”.^[2][6] The German word is from Middle High German hurst (“thicket”), from Old High German hurst (“thicket”),^[7][5][6] recorded from the 10th century.^[8][9] Kluge and Pfeifer note that the modern form Horst is East Central and Low German, and that the usual modern German sense, an eyrie or nest of a bird of prey, came from hunters' language and has been the only common one since the 18th century.^[8][9] Etymonline traces it to Proto-Germanic *hursti-, which also gave Middle Dutch horst (“underwood”) and Old English hyrst (“grove, wooded eminence”), the source of hurst.^[6][10] Etymonline connects it with Proto-Indo-European *kert- (“to turn, entwine”),^[6] while Kluge and Pfeifer place it with a group of words for wood and brushwood such as Welsh prys (“brushwood”), reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European *kʷres-.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A block of the earth's crust raised relative to the land around it and bounded by faults: 1893, in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society.^[2][5][6] Dictionary.com dates it to 1890–95.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the technical sense it was borrowed with; the counterpart term, for a block that has sunk between faults, is graben, which Suess introduced in the same work.^[2][5][11] Collins and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the borrowing to the late 19th or 20th century.^[12][4]

Timeline

• 1893 – a raised block of the earth's crust bounded by faults.^[2][5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (geology) A block of the earth's crust that has been raised relative to the land on either side and is bounded by faults; compare graben.^{[12][5][2][3]}

Related words

• hurst
• graben

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2002), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 24th ed., Berlin / New York: De Gruyter
9. ^ a b c Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins