Aesir

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of deities in Norse mythology known for their power and association with war and governance
2. A collective of mythological figures from Scandinavian folklore, symbolizing various aspects of life and human experience
3. A pantheon of gods revered in ancient Norse culture, representing different elements of the cosmos and human affairs

Etymology: The Æsir are the principal gods of Norse mythology, and their name is a plural in disguise. The Old Norse singular "áss" meant a single god, and "æsir" is its nominative plural, so the people who wrote about these deities were, in effect, naming a crowd of divinities with a plural form that English later borrowed as if it were a singular-based noun. The root goes back a long way. It traces to Proto-Germanic "ansuz", meaning "god", which in turn comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to engender, beget". The same ancestry lies behind the Old English "ēse", a word for a god that survived mostly in names, and the Sanskrit "ásura", a word for a divine being. The Sanskrit and Iranian cognates are a striking pairing: "ásura" and "Ahura" are doublets, two forms of one ancient word that developed in different directions, with the Sanskrit one eventually coming to name a class of demons in Hindu texts while the Iranian one became the name of the supreme god Ahura Mazda.