entry
alster
/ˈalstər/offspring; something brought forth
From O.Swedish alster (offspring).
from Old Norse ala
from Old Norse ala
Word Ancestry
from Old Norse ala
from Old Norse ala
A tiny verb for feeding and raising turns, a little later, into the idea of something that has been brought into the world. That is the neat trick behind Germanic ala, the same family tree that gives English speakers words like old, albeit by a much twistier path. In medieval Sweden, alster could mean an offspring or a produced thing — the human child and the crafted object sharing a conceptual crib. Even the Hamburg river Alster carries that old Germanic feel of a thing made or shaped by landscape and time, though river names are often stubbornly hard to pin down with absolute certainty. So the word keeps one foot in the nursery and one in the workshop: whatever is an alster is something that has been made to grow.
The Story
A tiny verb for feeding and raising turns, a little later, into the idea of something that has been brought into the world. That is the neat trick behind Germanic ala, the same family tree that gives English speakers words like old, albeit by a much twistier path. In medieval Sweden, alster could mean an offspring or a produced thing — the human child and the crafted object sharing a conceptual crib. Even the Hamburg river Alster carries that old Germanic feel of a thing made or shaped by landscape and time, though river names are often stubbornly hard to pin down with absolute certainty. So the word keeps one foot in the nursery and one in the workshop: whatever is an alster is something that has been made to grow.
Modern Usage
a half-and-half mix of beer and lemonade
Popularized by: informal drinking slang and Urban Dictionary usage
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary entry describing an Alster as a beer-and-lemonade mix
Kin & Kindred
From 'alster'·offspring; product; that which is brought forth
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Urban Dictionary
Wiktionary