A dialectal or archaic term for a harsh, grating sound, or possibly a variant of 'harsh' in some regional speech.
Possibly from Old English or early Germanic, related to 'harsh' or 'harsh' sounds. The exact etymology is uncertain, as this is an archaic or very localized dialectal term that appears rarely in historical texts.
Words like 'earsh' remind us that English had hundreds of regional variants that simply didn't survive—if someone's village died out or migrated before printing presses standardized spelling, their unique words vanished from history.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.