Üpris – Oma Või Laen?
Üpris – indigenous or loanword?

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the etymology of üpris, which is a common word in standard Estonian. There are different hypotheses about its origin, but still no consensus. In the 17th-19th-century Estonian writings the word usually means either ’very’ or ’great; wonderfully’, in the 19th century also ’rather’, like today. Reports of its dialectal use are rare. Most probably we have here a loanword expressing superlatively. Phonetically and semantically, as well as according to dialect material the source word could have been ypperst (dial. also ypp(e)rster etc) ’the most wonderful; most wonderfully’ originating in Old Modern Swedish. However, the donor language can also be seen in Low German, where upperst(e) (cf. the Baltic German üpperste) means ’the most noble/important; the highest, main etc’.

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