elder

Multiple Entries:
  elder    Edda  

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
elder1

▶adjective (of one or more out of a group of people) of a greater age. ▶noun

• 1 (one's elder) a person of greater age than one.

• 2 a leader or senior figure in a community or tribe.

• 3 an official in the early Christian Church, or of various Protestant Churches and sects.

– derivatives
eldership noun.

– origin OE ieldra, eldra, of Gmc origin; rel. to eld and old.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
elder2

▶noun a small tree or shrub with white flowers and bluish-black or red berries. [Sambucus nigra and related species.]

■ used in names of other plants resembling this, e.g. ground elder.

– origin OE ellærn; rel. to Mid. Low Ger. ellern, elderne.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
Edda /ˈɛdə/

▶noun either of two 13th-century Icelandic books, the Elder or Poetic Edda (a collection of Old Norse poems on Norse legends) and the Younger or Prose Edda (a handbook to Icelandic poetry).

– origin either from the name of a character in the ON poem Rigsthul, or from ON óthr ‘poetry’.