elää

‘live’ · runosong lemma · Finnish verb

English gloss	live
Part of speech	verb
Language	Finnish
Total occurrences	10,026
By corpus	SKVR 5,936, JR 4,084, KR 506 poems, ERAB 0

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

elää, ellää, eleä, elin, elän, elävä, elänyt, eläisi, elääpi, eletä, eletty, elettiin, elävi, elettii, eläpä, elit, elänen, elät, elämme, elämmä, elettihin, eläis, elänkö, eläissä, eläkää, elivät, elännä, elettih, eläköön, eläpi, eletään, eläny, eläisin, elätte, elettiinpä, elänt, elettänehen, eleäksesi, eläkäi, elähän … and 210 more of 250 attested forms

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
live (lived, lives, living)	3,105	93.6%
life (life's)	54	1.6%
while	20	0.6%
let (let's)	13	0.4%
long	13	0.4%
alive	11	0.3%
lifetime (lifetimes)	11	0.3%
creature	9	0.3%
liver (liver's)	8	0.2%
indeed	7	0.2%
Uses counted	3,319

Example verses

kuin olla kuin eleä (SKVR I1 15.) read in context
How to be, how to live:
hyv on pohjolan eleä (SKVR I1 73.) read in context
Good is Pohjola’s life,
miten pohjola elää (SKVR I1 80.) read in context
"How does Pohjola fare?"
miten olla kuin eleä (SKVR I1 124.) read in context
How to exist, how to live,
missä vuojola elääpi (SKVR I1 251.) read in context
Where does Vuojola live,
missä vuojela elää (SKVR I1 251 a).) read in context
Where Vuojela dwells,
miten olla kuin elää (SKVR I1 272.) read in context
How to be, how to live,
en mä elää elotta (SKVR I1 273.) read in context
I cannot live lifeless,

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
Päivän päästö	61
Ison kotona ja toiselassa	56
Kun minun emoni, isoni eläisi	54
Elettiin ennen meillä	43
Eliniän tiedustelu käeltä	35
Ison kotona ja miehelässä	35
Tytön lempinimet ja/tai miniän haukkumanimet	32
Sotamiehenotto	31

Collection places

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

Place	Poems
Narvusi	255
Soikkola	131
Vuokkiniemi	99
Lempaala	97
Vuole	69
Suistamo	59
Sakkola	50
Ilomantsi	47
Kaprio	39
Itä- ja Pohjois-Inkeri	34

Attestation over time

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

Decade	Poems
1650–1659	2
1670–1679	1
1690–1699	8
1700–1709	6
1730–1739	1
1750–1759	3
1760–1769	3
1770–1779	6
1780–1789	12
1800–1809	1
1810–1819	8
1820–1829	44
1830–1839	192
1840–1849	346
1850–1859	249
1860–1869	29
1870–1879	50
1880–1889	331
1890–1899	285
1900–1909	206
1910–1919	147
1920–1929	48
1930–1939	396
1940–1949	90
1950–1959	59
1960–1969	70

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Elias Lönnrot	412
Volmari Porkka	145
Forsberg (Alava), Vihtori	95
Jaako Länkelä	81
A. D. Neovius	72

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 2,601)

SKVR: SKVR I1 15., SKVR I1 73., SKVR I1 80., SKVR I1 124., SKVR I1 251., SKVR I1 251 a)., SKVR I1 272., SKVR I1 273., SKVR I1 310., SKVR I1 313., SKVR I1 420., SKVR I1 442., SKVR I1 488., SKVR I1 491., SKVR I1 499., SKVR I1 517., SKVR I1 520., SKVR I1 554., SKVR I1 555., SKVR I1 559 a)., SKVR I1 erill. [Sampo] 4., SKVR I1 erill. [Kojosen poika] 2., SKVR I1 erill. [Kojosen poika] 1., SKVR I1 erill. [Kojosen poika] 2., SKVR I2 712., SKVR I2 758., SKVR I2 758 b)., SKVR I2 811., SKVR I2 816., SKVR I2 834., SKVR I2 879., SKVR I2 970., SKVR I2 1011., SKVR I2 1012., SKVR I2 1013., SKVR I2 1016., SKVR I2 1017., SKVR I2 1020., SKVR I2 1038., SKVR I2 1040., SKVR I2 1054., SKVR I2 1075., SKVR I2 1103., SKVR I2 1123., SKVR I2 1174., SKVR I2 1175., SKVR I2 1176., SKVR I2 1177., SKVR I2 1192., SKVR I2 1249., SKVR I2 1249 a)., SKVR I3 1307., SKVR I3 1369., SKVR I3 1377., SKVR I3 1388., SKVR I3 1392., SKVR I3 1403., SKVR I3 1405., SKVR I3 1407., SKVR I3 1414.

Related lemmas

Estonian cognate: elama

← elu ema →

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.

Forms of other words are left out of the verses and counts.
In Finnish: elä, eläs, elägä, elkeä, eläko, eläkö, elkeäte

The total and per-corpus counts at the top of the page are the lexicon’s: the uses the lemmatizer gave to this word. The uses below are counted by spelling in the same corpora, so a spelling this page shares with another word’s page is counted on both pages, and the two figures can differ either way.

In Finnish:
Uses shown on this page: 3,201
Uses left out as another word: 5,951
Uses left out because the AI reading could not be matched to the verse: 0

Companion words are not shown, because they are counted over every word spelled like this one.