olema

‘be’ · runosong lemma · Estonian verb

English gloss	be
Part of speech	verb
Language	Estonian
Total occurrences	192,047
By corpus	SKVR 0, JR 0, KR 0, ERAB 193,130

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

oli, om, ole, olli, olid, oleks, oll, olen, olin, oled, oles, omma, olgu, olnud, olõ, olema, olge, oleme, olõi, olõs, ollid, olnd, old, ollin, olle, oleei, olete, olõõi, põlnd, olnu, olõõs, olles, olei, olga, oleksin, oleksid, olõd, olees, olevat, ollõ … and 484 more of 524 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

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

EKSS

olema

1. väljendab subjekti (olendi, eseme, sündmuse, nähtuse, seisundi, olukorra vm.) üldist, antud hetkel v. minevikus eksisteerimise fakti: eksisteerima, olemas olema
2. väljendab subjekti eksisteerimisprotsessi: asetsema, asuma, paiknema, viibima; elama; funktsioneerima, käituma
3. iseseisva tähenduseta v. väga üldise tähendusega olles iseloomustab koos predikatiivi v. adverbiaaliga subjekti omadust, olemust, tunnust, kuuluvust (kuhugi v. kellelegi) jms
4. abiverb verbi liitaegade koosseisus

(+1)

EMS

olema

(üldse, tegelikkuses)
(mingis kohas, kuskil)
(mingil ajal, millalgi)
(kellegi valduses, omanduses, käsutuses)

(+20)

Idamurre

olema

olema

Seto

olema

võõrass külessmaad inemine naaśs `kitmä, kosilanõ `uskõ ja võt́t `arkiʔ

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 · Seto 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
be (am)	25,625	17.9%
let (let's)	1,738	1.2%
own	657	0.5%
Uses counted	143,407

Example verses

karu oli murdnud musta ärja (AES, MT 3, 1 (1)) read in context
The bear had slain the black ox,
mulle tulles mulle olles (AES, MT 3, 1 (2)) read in context
Coming to me, being with me,
oleks sie oleks sie (AES, MT 3, 2 (6)) read in context
If only she, if only she,
eks mua viel paremb ole (AES, MT 3, 3 (7)) read in context
Isn't it better for me
mis tal kiita laita oli (AES, MT 3, 5 (13)) read in context
What praise-blame he carried,
ei ole kodu meie neiud (AES, MT 3, 5 (14)) read in context
Our maidens are not at home,
unt oli pulma oldermanni (AES, MT 3, 6 (16)) read in context
Wolf was the wedding alderman,
küll oli ella küll oli kulla (AES, MT 3, 7 (23)) read in context
There was plenty of food, plenty of gold,

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
üks	8,425	4,179
ks	5,449	4,956
olemine	3,953	659
kolm	3,371	1,905
ilus	2,983	1,708
kas	2,846	2,263
peal	2,717	2,434
mees	2,668	3,312

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
Tule mulle!	589
Tule mulle	583
Venna sõjalugu	571
Oleks see mees minu!	551
Ema haual	486
Kättemaks sakstele	472
Laulu võim	440
Oleks	411

Collection places

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

Place	Poems
Setumaa	2,346
Kuusalu	1,690
Paistu	1,454
Haljala	1,407
Karksi	1,264
Tarvastu	1,245
Helme	1,077
Halliste	1,055
Ambla	967
Sangaste	942

Attestation over time

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

Decade	Poems
1800–1809	5
1820–1829	42
1830–1839	6
1840–1849	47
1850–1859	20
1860–1869	381
1870–1879	3,050
1880–1889	9,307
1890–1899	12,266
1900–1909	2,812
1910–1919	3,602
1920–1929	4,438
1930–1939	5,591
1940–1949	404
1950–1959	2

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Karl Voldemar Rosenstrauch	1,314
Karl Viljak	1,135
Mihkel (Tori) Ostrov	962
Gustav Vilberg (Vilbaste)	805
Richard Viidalepp (Viidebaum)	730

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 44,709)

ERAB: AES, MT 3, 1 (1), AES, MT 3, 1 (2), AES, MT 3, 2 (6), AES, MT 3, 3 (7), AES, MT 3, 5 (13), AES, MT 3, 5 (14), AES, MT 3, 6 (16), AES, MT 3, 7 (23), AES, MT 3, 10 (33), AES, MT 3, 10 (34), AES, MT 3, 12, AES, MT 3, 14, AES, MT 3, 14, AES, MT 3, 15, AES, MT 3, 15, AES, MT 3, 17, AES, MT 3, 17, AES, MT 3, 18, AES, MT 3, 18, AES, MT 3, 19, AES, MT 3, 19, AES, MT 3, 20, AES, MT 3, 21/2, AES, MT 3, 22, AES, MT 3, 25, AES, MT 3, 26, AES, MT 4, 1, AES, MT 9, 1, AES, MT 21, 13, AES, MT 22, 2, AES, MT 22, 5, AES, MT 27, 16/31 (6), AES, MT 28, 12/3, AES, MT 31, 6, AES, MT 33, 15, AES, MT 34, 4, AES, MT 34, 5, AES, MT 34, 8, AES, MT 36, 3/5, AES, MT 40, 6 (8), AES, MT 40, 6/7 (9), AES, MT 40, 9 (12), AES, MT 40, 10/1 (15), AES, MT 40, 11/2 (16), AES, MT 40, 12/4 (17), AES, MT 40, 14/6 (18), AES, MT 40, 18 (20), AES, MT 40, 18 (21), AES, MT 40, 19 (22), AES, MT 40, 20 (24), AES, MT 40, 21/2 (26), AES, MT 40, 23 (29), AES, MT 40, 23/4 (30), AES, MT 40, 24 (31), AES, MT 40, 24 (32), AES, MT 40, 25 (33), AES, MT 40, 25 (34), AES, MT 40, 30 (41), AES, MT 40, 31 (42), AES, MT 40, 32 (43)

Related lemmas

Finnish cognate: olla

← oksa olla →

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: ollin