"Gunsel" thread: loose end

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:16 AM -0500 1/31/02, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>M-W (Web), AHD4 (Web), and Lighter's HDAS show the putative Yiddish
>ancestor as "gendzl"; my OED and RHUD show it as "genzel".
>
Oops, you're right.  I think I even cited some of those sources
earlier, with the front vowel.  Ach!  So this casts doubt either on
the chronology or on the actual form of the immediate Yiddish (if it
was Yiddish) source.  What remains hard to imagine is a front vowel
de-umlauting to a back (or mid) one without diphthongization, as in a
move from "gendzl" to "gantzel" (and thence "gunsel").

larry