Dialect materials in the Estonian Etymological Dictionary

Abstract

This article is about how Estonian dialect materials are represented in the Estonian Etymological Dictionary being compiled at the Institute of the Estonian Language.
A limited number of dialect words will be included in the headword list of the dictionary. Dialect data may be vital for etymologization as well. In the case of genuine words and older loanwords, the archaic phonological traits that have survived in dialects are essential; in the case of more recent loanwords, the dialectal variants show different degrees of adaptation. Sometimes the areal distribution of a word may prove a valuable cue to its original background. Etymologization may also be based on the dialectal meaning of a word. A specific group consists of dialect words adopted into standard usage in a different sense as technical terms.