Asgard (n.)

collective name for the chief gods of the pagan Scandinavian religion, from Old Norse plural of āss "god," from Proto-Germanic *ansu- (source also of Old High German ansi, Old English os, Gothic ans "god"), from PIE root *ansu- "spirit" (source also of first element in Ahura Mazda (q.v.)).

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to grasp, enclose."

It forms all or part of: Asgard; carol; choir; choral; chorale; choric; chorister; chorus; cohort; cortege; court; courteous; courtesan; courtesy; courtier; curtilage; curtsy; garden; garth; gird; girdle; girt; girth; -grad; hangar; Hilda; Hildegard; Hortense; horticulture; jardiniere; kindergarten; Midgard; orchard; Terpsichore; Utgard; yard (n.1) "patch of ground around a house."

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit ghra- "house;" Albanian garth "hedge;" Greek khortos "pasture;" Phrygian -gordum "town;" Latin hortus "garden;" Old Irish gort "field," Breton garz "enclosure, garden;" Old English gyrdan "to gird," geard "fenced enclosure, garden," German Garten "garden." Lithuanian gardas "pen, enclosure," Old Church Slavonic gradu "town, city," and Russian gorod, -grad "town, city" belong to this group, but linguists dispute whether they are independent developments or borrowings from Germanic.

in Germanic cosmology, "the abode of the human race, the world inhabited by men" (opposed to Asgard, the abode of the gods), by 1770, from Old Norse miðgarðr, from mið "mid" (from PIE root *medhyo- "middle") + Proto-Germanic *gardoz "enclosure, tract" (from PIE root *gher- (1) "to grasp, enclose;" compare yard (n.1)). The Old English cognate was middangeard, which later was folk-etymologized as Middle Earth.