sieva (plural sievas)
- A small variety of lima bean.
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
From Proto-Baltic *šeiwā-, *šiewā, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱey-wā-, from *ḱey- (“be located; camp, settlement; friendly; from the same home”) with a suffix -wā (from the same stem also Latvian saime (“household”)). The semantic change seems to have been “friendly settlement or household member” > “woman”. Cognates include Sanskrit शेवः (śévaḥ, “dear, friendly, honored”), Gothic heiwa-frauja (heiwa-frauja, “household god”), Old High German hiwa (“wife”), hi(w)o (“spouse; servant”), and Latin civis (“citizen”) (previously “household member”, “villager”). As Latvian sieva gradually shifted its basic meaning to “wife”, a new term sieviete (“woman”) was coined (in the 19th century).
sieva f (4th declension)
- wife (married woman; woman with respect to her husband)
- vīrs un sieva — husband and wife
- nolūkot sievu — to look for a wife
- ņemt, apņemt sievu — to take a wife (= to get married)
- sievas vecāki — wife's parents
- viņa jau divus gadus ir sieva — she has been a wife for two years
- viņam nau sievas — he doesn't have a wife
- sievu koris — women's choir
- tirgus sieva — market woman (who sells at the market)
- istabā ienāca kāda sieva — some woman came into the room
- ^ “sieva” in Konstantīns Karulis (1992, 2001), Latviešu Etimoloģijas Vārdnīca, in 2 vols, Rīga: AVOTS, ISBN: 9984-700-12-7