veli

‘brother’ · runosong lemma · Estonian and Finnish noun

English gloss	brother
Part of speech	noun
Language	Estonian and Finnish
Total occurrences	29,691
By corpus	SKVR 3,856, JR 2,440, KR 216 poems, ERAB 23,392

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

veli, vellekene, vello, velekene, vellon, vele, veljen, velvyeni, vellokõnõ, velloni, vellot, veljyeni, veljeni, veljä, velekese, velleke, velitse, veljet, velel, veljes, veljekene, vellen, vellolle, velvyein, veljed, veljesi, vellol, velloseni, vellolta, veljestä, velekeista, veleken, veljensä, veljellä, veljeäsi, vellet, velvyen, velju, velles, veljeäni … and 628 more of 668 attested forms

In Estonian dictionaries

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

EKSS

veli · 33

vend, vennas. a. (vere poolest)

Idamurre

veli

pruudipoolne peiupoiss

Seto

veli

kosija koos isamehega

Sources: EKSS — Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat, Eesti Keele Instituut (CC BY 4.0) · 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
brother (brothers, brother's, brothers')	31,138	98.8%
little	2,401	7.6%
dear	2,351	7.5%
law (law's)	264	0.8%
vello	92	0.3%
veli	38	0.1%
Uses counted	31,529

Example verses

miull on seppo selvä veljä (SKVR I1 21.) read in context
I have a smith-brother,
vanhempihe veljihinse (SKVR I1 86.) read in context
Elder to his brothers.
viere vettä veljen silmät (SKVR I1 171.) read in context
Beside water, brother's eyes,
veräjällä veljet peätyy (SKVR I1 216.) read in context
At the gate brothers stand,
tulõ velekene perrä (AES, MT 22, 1) read in context
A little brother came after:
ütsä vele rõiva kuivada (AES, MT 22, 4) read in context
One brother's clothes to dry,
mul oli väike vellekene (AES, MT 34, 5) read in context
I had a little brother,
velekõnõ mul veritseh sõah (AES, MT 40, 14/6 (18)) read in context
My brother is in bloody battle,

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
elama	4,145	1,196
noor	3,717	1,463
hella	2,931	622
ks	2,742	1,529
vastata	1,399	482
sulho	1,099	395
verkko	952	263
viu	860	121

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
Venna sõjalugu	317
Sõjalaul	193
Lunastettava neito	184
Oljamissa käynti	119
Myyty neito	104
Äidin kuolo	103
Iso tammi	99
Tunnen tuima neiu	99

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	1,177
Setumaa	1,131
Paistu	447
Karksi	438
Tarvastu	350
Lempaala	341
Räpina	333
Halliste	331
Helme	306
Soikkola	295

Attestation over time

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

Decade	Poems
1690–1699	3
1700–1709	9
1730–1739	1
1750–1759	3
1770–1779	2
1780–1789	8
1800–1809	2
1810–1819	14
1820–1829	51
1830–1839	160
1840–1849	394
1850–1859	692
1860–1869	233
1870–1879	773
1880–1889	2,031
1890–1899	2,289
1900–1909	1,011
1910–1919	596
1920–1929	662
1930–1939	1,388
1940–1949	220
1950–1959	99
1960–1969	62

Collectors

The collectors who most often recorded poems attesting this lemma.

Collector	Poems
Volmari Porkka	411
Forsberg (Alava), Vihtori	373
Jakob Jagomann	306
Jaako Länkelä	297
Elias Lönnrot	288

Poems attesting this lemma (60 / 11,027)

SKVR: SKVR I1 21., SKVR I1 86., SKVR I1 171., SKVR I1 216., SKVR I1 228., SKVR I1 229., SKVR I1 234., SKVR I1 236., SKVR I1 237., SKVR I1 238., SKVR I1 260., SKVR I1 283., SKVR I1 291., SKVR I1 299., SKVR I1 315., SKVR I1 357., SKVR I1 440., SKVR I1 448., SKVR I1 459., SKVR I1 469., SKVR I1 604., SKVR I1 614., SKVR I1 614 a)., SKVR I1 681., SKVR I1 683., SKVR I1 683 a)., SKVR I1 689., SKVR I1 693., SKVR I1 695 a)., SKVR I1 695 b)., SKVR I1 697., SKVR I1 697 a)., SKVR I1 698., SKVR I1 erill. [Polvenhaava] 1., SKVR I1 erill. [Polvenhaava] 3., SKVR I1 erill. [Vipunen] 3., SKVR I1 erill. [Laivaretki ja kantele] 11., SKVR I2 834., SKVR I2 847., SKVR I2 854., SKVR I2 926., SKVR I2 928., SKVR I2 943 b)., SKVR I2 951., SKVR I2 1015., SKVR I2 1017., SKVR I2 1020., SKVR I2 1023., SKVR I2 1024., SKVR I2 1054., SKVR I2 1056., SKVR I2 1092., SKVR I2 1144., SKVR I2 1147., SKVR I2 1148., SKVR I2 1148 a)., SKVR I2 1149., SKVR I2 1151., SKVR I2 1153., SKVR I2 1155.

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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.