mees

‘man’ · runosong lemma · Estonian noun

English gloss	man
Part of speech	noun
Language	Estonian
Total occurrences	29,604
By corpus	SKVR 0, JR 0, KR 0, ERAB 29,604

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

mees, mehed, meesi, mehele, meeste, meesta, miis, meest, mehi, mehel, mieste, meestel, miesta, miisi, meessi, meheta, mehida, meiste, mehile, meheks, mehita, mehega, meestega, meheksi, mehest, mehesta, meiti, meestele, mehesse, meitid, mehes, meesa, mihike, meestest, mehessa, miheta, mehela, mehelt, meheksa, miihi … and 101 more of 141 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

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

EKSS

mees · mehe, meest, mehesse, meeste, mehi, meestesse

1. meessoost inimene, meesisik, meesterahvas (mõnikord naisele v. poisi(kese)le vastandatuna); hrl. ant. naine
2. abielumees
3. (soolisust rõhutamata:) inimene, isik; asjamees, tegelane

EMS

mees-

mees-

mees

meessoost inimene, meesterahvas (ka poisile või naisele vastandatuna)
(mehelikkust, mehe omadusi silmas pidades)
(tegevusala silmas pidades)
(naisest)

(+8)

Idamurre

mees

mees

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
man (men, men's, man's)	24,664	83.8%
husband (husband's, husbands)	3,860	13.1%
forest	281	1.0%
husbandless	33	0.1%
girl (girls, girl's, girls')	30	0.1%
little	30	0.1%
Uses counted	29,442

Example verses

mulle nuorele mehele (AES, MT 3, 1 (2)) read in context
To me, a young husband,
metsast viiakse mehele (AES, MT 3, 6 (16)) read in context
From the forest, [they] are wed off,
saadab tüterid mehele (AES, MT 3, 7 (22)) read in context
escorts daughters to wed,
pane sie tütar mehele (AES, MT 3, 10 (31)) read in context
Marry your daughter to a husband.
sie saab ruttu mehele (AES, MT 3, 19) read in context
That one swiftly weds.
akkame mehed menema (AES, MT 3, 20) read in context
Let us hasten the men to go,
metsast viiakse mehele (AES, MT 3, 26) read in context
From the forest, he's taken as a husband,
õitsa audru sauga mehed (AES, MT 9, 1) read in context
Men of Õitsa, Audru, Sauga,

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
noor	25,203	4,982
meel	4,588	1,274
minema	2,473	2,179
mets	2,352	902
saama	2,182	1,942
mürama	2,023	271
sõda	1,986	656
meeleline	1,774	278

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
Oleks see mees minu!	415
Venna sõjalugu	367
Oleks	306
Hiire pulmad	292
Sõjalaul	262
Laulu võim	221
Tule mulle!	195
Joodikust mees	192

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	694
Kuusalu	493
Ambla	470
Kolga-Jaani	421
Kadrina	402
Paistu	401
Setumaa	397
Karksi	376
Väike-Maarja	324
Tarvastu	320

Attestation over time

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

Decade	Poems
1800–1809	1
1820–1829	9
1830–1839	3
1840–1849	22
1850–1859	12
1860–1869	120
1870–1879	1,072
1880–1889	3,642
1890–1899	4,608
1900–1909	1,007
1910–1919	1,206
1920–1929	1,323
1930–1939	1,390
1940–1949	84

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Karl Voldemar Rosenstrauch	590
Mihkel (Tori) Ostrov	360
Karl Viljak	346
Oskar Philipp Kallas	245
koguja teadmata	232

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 15,516)

ERAB: AES, MT 3, 1 (2), AES, MT 3, 6 (16), AES, MT 3, 7 (22), AES, MT 3, 10 (31), AES, MT 3, 19, AES, MT 3, 20, AES, MT 3, 26, AES, MT 9, 1, AES, MT 25, 13/6, AES, MT 27, 32/4, AES, MT 34, 4, AES, MT 34, 5, AES, MT 36, 3/5, AES, MT 40, 10/1 (15), AES, MT 40, 11/2 (16), AES, MT 40, 23/4 (30), AES, MT 40, 27 (36), AES, MT 43, 64, AES, MT 43, 70/1, AES, MT 43, 75, AES, MT 43, 88, AES, MT 49, 20/1 (9), AES, MT 60, 33 (20), AES, MT 65, 12/3, AES, MT 65, 14, AES, MT 66, 4/6, AES, MT 66, 10/12, AES, MT 70, 35, AES, MT 76, 1/2 (1), AES, MT 76, 28/30 (2), AES MT 287, 20 (b), AES, MT 88, 37, AES, MT 93, 9/10, AES, MT 117, 55/6 (8), AES, MT 117, 60/1 (15), AES, MT 141, 5, AES, MT 141, 12/13, AES, MT 141, 18, AES, MT 141, 18/20, AES, MT 141, 22/23, AES, MT 141, 25/6, AES, MT 141, 28/30, AES, MT 141, 35, AES, MT 141, 39, AES, MT 152, 3/6, AES, MT 154, 16, AES, MT 163, 1/3 (1), AES, MT 171, 27/8 (1), AES, MT 174, 34/5, AES, MT 174, 37/8, AES, MT 180, 3 (e), AES, MT 197, 4/5, AES, MT 197, 28, AES, MT 204, 56/7, AES, MT 205, 17/8, AES, MT 205, 35/6, AES, MT 216, 19, AES, MT 219, 15, AES, MT 230, 13/4, AES, MT 230, 16/7

Related lemmas

Finnish cognate: mies

← meel mennä →

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.