surma

‘death’ · runosong lemma · Finnish noun

English gloss	death
Part of speech	noun
Language	Finnish
Total occurrences	4,600
By corpus	SKVR 2,850, JR 1,750, KR 189 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

surma, surman, surmoa, surmat, surmalle, surmaa, surmin, surmaksi, surmana, surmia, surmaistaan, surmansa, surmatta, surmua, surmal, surmalla, surmallen, surmasta, surmaan, surmahan, surmaistasi, surmall, surmassa, surmii, surmakseni, surmastani, surmaal, surmaha, surmallaki, surmallenki, surmatansa, surmazen, surmista, surmn, surmo, surmoo, ſurma, surimmoi, surimoi, surmaalle … and 34 more of 74 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

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

EMS

surma-

surma-

Sources: EMS — Eesti murrete sõnaraamat, 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
death (death's, deaths)	4,374	95.3%
danger	43	0.9%
kill (kills, killed)	41	0.9%
sorrow (sorrows)	27	0.6%
doom	25	0.5%
demise	16	0.3%
surma	16	0.3%
killing (killings)	15	0.3%
slaughter	11	0.2%
destruction	8	0.2%
Uses counted	4,590

Example verses

surman muun murottamata (SKVR I1 30.) read in context
Without crumbling to death?"
kuin suussa surman suitset (SKVR I1 78.) read in context
Like death's bridle in mouth,
männ on surmatta manalla (SKVR I1 92.) read in context
surman suuren suun oville (SKVR I1 275.) read in context
To Death's great doorway,
muun surman murottamatta (SKVR I1 352.) read in context
No other death endured?
muun surman murentamata (SKVR I1 354.) read in context
Or other death's destruction?"
muun surman murentamata (SKVR I1 354 a).) read in context
Without other death's dissolution?"
surman muun murottamata (SKVR I1 355.) read in context
No other death to break you?"

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
suo	1,841	359
tulema	1,456	775
vastaan	1,404	230
myöten	1,101	228
suu	1,028	375
saattaa	993	196
sukka	987	179
matka	858	190

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
Lemminkäisen virsi	171
Tule surma vastaan	153
Tule surma suota myöten	123
Leino leski	101
Kalervo ja Untamo	81
Kalevanpojan kosto	69
Ei se surma suorin tehnyt	65
Saaren neidot	45

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	92
Vuokkiniemi	82
Suistamo	81
Sakkola	80
Lempaala	76
Vuole	69
Kivennapa	66
Soikkola	60
Rautu	52
Metsäpirtti	41

Attestation over time

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

Decade	Poems
1650–1659	1
1690–1699	20
1700–1709	1
1710–1719	1
1750–1759	1
1760–1769	3
1770–1779	3
1780–1789	5
1800–1809	1
1810–1819	6
1820–1829	31
1830–1839	112
1840–1849	193
1850–1859	166
1860–1869	42
1870–1879	84
1880–1889	266
1890–1899	235
1900–1909	123
1910–1919	128
1920–1929	55
1930–1939	485
1940–1949	126
1950–1959	164
1960–1969	83
1970–1979	5

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Elias Lönnrot	218
Volmari Porkka	96
Frans Kärki	86
A. A. Borenius	73
Forsberg (Alava), Vihtori	65

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 2,345)

SKVR: SKVR I1 30., SKVR I1 78., SKVR I1 92., SKVR I1 275., SKVR I1 352., SKVR I1 354., SKVR I1 354 a)., SKVR I1 355., SKVR I1 355 a)., SKVR I1 357., SKVR I1 366., SKVR I1 370., SKVR I1 375., SKVR I1 378., SKVR I1 378 a)., SKVR I1 419., SKVR I1 450 a)., SKVR I1 569., SKVR I1 680., SKVR I1 erill. [Laivaretki ja kantele] 4., SKVR I1 erill. [Väin. tuomio] 3., SKVR I2 702., SKVR I2 703., SKVR I2 704., SKVR I2 705., SKVR I2 706., SKVR I2 707., SKVR I2 708., SKVR I2 709., SKVR I2 710., SKVR I2 711., SKVR I2 712., SKVR I2 713., SKVR I2 716., SKVR I2 717., SKVR I2 718., SKVR I2 719., SKVR I2 722., SKVR I2 722 a)., SKVR I2 724., SKVR I2 725., SKVR I2 726., SKVR I2 728., SKVR I2 728 a)., SKVR I2 729., SKVR I2 737., SKVR I2 738., SKVR I2 740., SKVR I2 741., SKVR I2 742., SKVR I2 746., SKVR I2 748., SKVR I2 749., SKVR I2 752., SKVR I2 754., SKVR I2 769., SKVR I2 772., SKVR I2 773., SKVR I2 774., SKVR I2 777.

Related lemmas

Estonian cognate: surm

← suo suu →

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.