ämm

‘mother-in-law’ · runosong lemma · Estonian noun

English gloss	mother-in-law
Part of speech	noun
Language	Estonian
Total occurrences	6,763
By corpus	SKVR 0, JR 0, KR 0, ERAB 6,762

The counts in this table cover all attested spellings of this lemma, not only the headword form; all are word occurrences, except the KR figure in the By corpus row, which counts poems and is not part of the total.

Full dictionary entry · Search in the corpus · Geographic distribution

Attested wordforms

ämma, ämm, ämmal, ämmakene, ämmale, ämmad, ämmalt, ämmikene, ämmäle, ämmäl, ämmäkene, ämmada, ämmalta, ämmast, ämme, ämmäd, ämmält, ämmake, änäm, ämmäkesta, ämmäkeine, ämmaks, ämmasida, ämmalegi, ämmaga, ämmaksi, ämmap, ämmadelle, ämmade, ämmu, ämmäkäne, ämmälta, ämmadeksi, ämmadelta, ämmat, ämmäla, ämmala, ämmalasa, ämmasta, ämmata … and 13 more of 53 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

Definitions are shown in Estonian: the source dictionaries are Estonian-language works.

EKSS

ämm · -a 23

mehe- v. naiseema

Idamurre

ämm

kämm

ämm

vanaema

Sources: EKSS — Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat, Eesti Keele Instituut (CC BY 4.0) · Idamurde sõnastik, Eesti Keele Instituut

English words in the AI translations

How often the AI analysis used each English word when it translated the uses of this word. Forms of one English word are counted together, and one translation can contain several words, so the shares can add up to more than 100%.

English word	Uses	Share
mother (mothers, mother's)	7,553	98.5%
law (law's)	7,492	97.7%
little	125	1.6%
dear	109	1.4%
old	40	0.5%
woman	40	0.5%
daughter	11	0.1%
spark	10	0.1%
Uses counted	7,666

Example verses

sõitsin ämma ukse ette (AES, MT 3, 5 (14)) read in context
I rode to the mother-in-law's door,
ästi ästi ämma lammas (AES, MT 7, 76) read in context
Gently, gently, mother's sheep,
äi tuli vasta ämm tuli vasta (AES, MT 25, 13/6) read in context
Father-in-law greets me, mother-in-law too,
meil oo kulda ämma tuuli kaske (AES, MT 43, 48/50) read in context
We have gold from mother-in-law’s wind, oh birch.
ämm tuli kõrsa riisumaie (AES, MT 66, 1/2) read in context
mother-in-law to strip straw,
petab äia petab ämma (AES, MT 76, 33/4 (5)) read in context
deceives father-in-law, deceives mother-in-law,
või uo ämmal laadapõlle (AES MT 287, 4/14) read in context
or mother-in-law a festive apron,
kuidas nõuad ämma meele (AES MT 287, 15/7) read in context
How do you advise the mother-in-law's mind?

Companion words

Words that co-occur with this lemma inside the same verse line more often than chance predicts, ranked by log-likelihood (G²) over verse-level co-occurrence in SKVR, KR, JR and ERAB; only pairs seen at least 3 times.

Word	Association (G²)	Co-occurrences
äi	13,426	1,576
tere	1,543	304
särk	951	192
hästi	837	152
petma	834	155
lehm	825	200
teretama	778	124
meel	618	198

Song types

Song types of the poems attesting this lemma, as catalogued per poem in the source corpora (ERAB type names are in Estonian, SKVR names in Finnish; JR and KR poems carry no song-type record).

Song type	Poems
Kaevul kosija	187
Kits kile karja!	119
Petis peiu	102
Kosjahobu söötmine	79
Mehetapja	64
Isa- ja mehekodus	62
Tule mulle	54
Tule mulle!	53

Collection places

Where the poems attesting this lemma were collected; each count is the number of attesting poems recorded at that place.

Place	Poems
Kuusalu	130
Haljala	122
Ambla	107
Paistu	95
Väike-Maarja	93
Tarvastu	88
Tõstamaa	85
Halliste	84
Simuna	81
Karksi	81

Attestation over time

Poems attesting this lemma by decade of collection or publication; undated poems are not shown.

Decade	Poems
1820–1829	1
1860–1869	16
1870–1879	139
1880–1889	863
1890–1899	977
1900–1909	215
1910–1919	293
1920–1929	282
1930–1939	295
1940–1949	11

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Karl Voldemar Rosenstrauch	162
Mihkel (Tori) Ostrov	117
Karl Viljak	109
Oskar Philipp Kallas	89
Gustav Vilberg (Vilbaste)	74

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 3,313)

ERAB: AES, MT 3, 2 (5), AES, MT 3, 5 (14), AES, MT 7, 76, AES, MT 25, 13/6, AES, MT 43, 48/50, AES, MT 66, 1/2, AES, MT 76, 33/4 (5), AES MT 287, 4/14, AES MT 287, 15/7, AES, MT 88, 38, AES, MT 141, 2/3, AES, MT 141, 36/7, AES, MT 141, 26a/26b, AES, MT 174, 44, AES MT 208, 21/3, ARS 1, 820/1 (19), ARS 1, 821 (20), E A 5 (5), E A 5/6 (6), E A 29 (9), E A 31 (13), E A 32/3 (52), E A 103 (16), E A 107 (22), E A 122/4 (6), E A 127/8 (2), E A 130/3 (5), E A 180/2 (5), E A 210/1 (8), E A 230, E A 230, E A 242/4 (10), E A 264/7 (26), E A 297 (9), E A 320/2 (8), E A 355 (1), E A 377 (7), E A 381 (12), E A 387, E A 387/8, E A 389/90, E A 443 (4), E A 565/6 (25), E A 571 (33), E A 575 (1), E A 624/5 (9), E A 697/9 (16), E A 722/5 (2), E A 728/30 (4), E A 780 (14), E A 785/6 (21b), E A 792/3 (3), E A 844/6 (8), E A 867/9 (13), E A 901 (6), E A 915/6 (29), E A 995/6 (1), E A 997/8 (3), E A 1041/6 (15), E A 1056/8 (8)

Related lemmas

Finnish cognate: ämmä

← älä ämmä →

About this profile

The counts and examples on this page come from the lemmatized text of four Finnic runosong corpora: SKVR, JR, KR and ERAB. The table of English words comes from an AI analysis of the corpus; song types, collection places, collectors and dates follow each poem's own catalogue record.

The table of English words is counted from the translations kept in the AI analysis files, which hold only the most frequent translations of each word or spelling, so rare translations can be missing. Words that carry only grammar (such as the, to or didn’t) are left out, and so are English words used fewer than 5 times or in less than 0.1% of the uses counted. The analysis files can group two closely related words, which then show the same table.

Verses are found by the spellings listed above, so an occasional verse may show a different word spelled the same way.