Urthen

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Made of earth, clay or soil, a poetic or archaic term for something fashioned from the ground
2. Constructed from packed soil or baked clay, as an old-fashioned or literary way of describing such material
3. Describing an object formed out of the earth itself, a dated word once used in verse and older writing

Etymology: "Urthen" is an old spelling of "earthen," meaning made of earth or baked clay. It descends from Old English "eorðen," formed from "eorðe" (earth) and the suffix "-en," the same ending found in "golden" and "wooden" that marks a substance something is made of. Medieval scribes spelled the vowel of "earth" in several ways, and "urth" and "urthen" were among the variants. Those spellings faded from ordinary prose as the standard form settled, and the word now survives mostly in poetry, older writing, and dialect. The sense of "made of earth" has stayed almost unchanged from its Old English origin.