kena

‘nice’ · runosong lemma · Estonian adjective

English gloss	nice
Part of speech	adjective
Language	Estonian
Total occurrences	4,585
By corpus	SKVR 0, JR 0, KR 0, ERAB 4,585

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

kena, kenad, kenä, kenast, kenada, kenal, kenam, kenat, kenaksi, kenas, kenäd, kenama, kenade, kenäst, kenästi, kenaks, kenaid, kenasid, kenasse, kenni, kenamid, kenamida, keni, kenna, kenatse, kenadad, kenaga, kenamp, kenem, kenäda, kenaksa, kenamada, kenamaid, kenamast, kenamat, kenadam, kenadamad, kenakene, kenale, kenalt … and 31 more of 71 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

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

EKSS

kena · adj kõnek

1. meeldiva välimusega, nägus
2. meeldiva olemisega, hea, tore, sümpaatne; vastutulelik, lahke
3. (olukorra, tegevuse, nähtuse vms. kohta:) meeldiv, päris hea
4. üsna suur, kaunikene; tubli, võrdlemisi korralik

(+1)

EMS

kena

ilus, tore (vaadata, kuulata)
hea,
meeldiv, korralik (laadilt)
maitsev, kõlblik (süüa)

(+8)

Idamurre

kena

Sources: EKSS — Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat, Eesti Keele Instituut (CC BY 4.0) · EMS — Eesti murrete sõnaraamat, Eesti Keele Instituut · 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
nice (nicer)	2,072	44.9%
pretty (prettier, prettiest)	1,605	34.8%
beautiful	507	11.0%
fair	98	2.1%
fine	64	1.4%
beauty	54	1.2%
handsome	50	1.1%
beautifully	35	0.8%
lovely	34	0.7%
nicely	15	0.3%
Uses counted	4,613

Example verses

või mis ilus kena tüdruk (AES, MT 3, 2 (6)) read in context
Oh, what beautiful sweet girl!
kedra liisu kena tütar (AES, MT 3, 3 (8)) read in context
Spin, Liisu, fair daughter,
käisin kui käbi kenästi (AES, MT 4, 1) read in context
I moved like a pinecone gracefully,
need olid kaerata kenädäd (AES, MT 28, 12/3) read in context
Oat-fair lovelies!
kena keldre kambõrõh (AES, MT 40, 26 (35)) read in context
In a fair cellar chamber,
ah sina lidu mis kena nägu (AES, MT 43, 86) read in context
Ah, you rogue with the pretty face,
kelle sie kena neitsikene (AES, MT 49, 11/2 (3)) read in context
Whose is this lovely maid?"
sinu kenad valges kaela (AES, MT 62, 19/20) read in context
Your fair white neck.

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
kesk	5,049	669
kirst	1,478	238
kübar	699	146
oinas	665	94
kevad	623	96
kirik	601	125
küla	518	183
kelder	501	87

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
Laula, kuni elad!	96
Laula	86
Must naine	75
Pane see tütar minule!	66
Põlvist põdema	54
Mardilaul	51
Oleks see mees minu!	51
Tõbine naine	46

Collection places

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

Place	Poems
Haljala	150
Kuusalu	120
Muhu	99
Ambla	89
Paistu	86
Kadrina	85
Väike-Maarja	77
Jõhvi	73
Kolga-Jaani	71
Halliste	69

Attestation over time

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

Decade	Poems
1820–1829	1
1830–1839	1
1840–1849	1
1850–1859	1
1860–1869	17
1870–1879	192
1880–1889	769
1890–1899	965
1900–1909	253
1910–1919	258
1920–1929	303
1930–1939	327
1940–1949	27

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Mihkel (Tori) Ostrov	99
Karl Voldemar Rosenstrauch	93
Karl Viljak	87
Oskar Philipp Kallas	65
koguja teadmata	60

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 3,366)

ERAB: AES, MT 3, 2 (6), AES, MT 3, 3 (8), AES, MT 4, 1, AES, MT 28, 12/3, AES, MT 40, 26 (35), AES, MT 43, 86, AES, MT 49, 11/2 (3), AES, MT 62, 19/20, AES, MT 66, 4/6, AES, MT 84, 1/2, AES, MT 84, 3/7, AES MT 287, 4/14, AES, MT 88, 31/2, AES, MT 93, 9/10, AES, MT 152, 3/6, AES, MT 174, 28/9, AES, MT 187, 36/7, AES, MT 205, 11/6, AES MT 208, 17, AES MT 208, 18, AES MT 208, 20/1, AES MT 208, 21/3, AES, MT 222, 30/1, ARS 1, 733/5 (2), ARS 1, 807 (2), ARS 1, 851/7 (1), ARS 1, 867 (3), E A 39 (66), E A 94, E A 104 (2), E A 216 (13), E A 228/9, E A 260/1 (23), E A 264/7 (26), E A 339/40 (1), E A 358 (4), E A 400/1 (7), E A 406 (14), E A 472 (3), E A 515 (1), E A 535/8, E A 595/8; 613/4, E A 617/8 (3), E A 621 (2), E A 635 (6), E A 639 (9), E A 644 (15), E A 649/50 (20), E A 722/5 (2), E A 730/1 (5), E A 747/8, E A 748/9, E A 784 (19), E A 818 (8), E A 856 (4), E A 869/72 (14), E A 920 (2), E A 921 (3), E A 961 (1), E A 991/3 (3)

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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.