- Category
- Language and regions
- Reading time
- 12 min
- Sources
- Checked sources from the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and cultural institutions
Words and examples
Showing: 20
Buildings
klėtis
A store building or room for grain, clothing and other belongings, also used for sleeping. In a homestead description, check its function: klėtis and svirnas have not always meant exactly the same thing.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 186
#Buildings
svirnas
A granary or building for farm stores. Historical distinctions between svirnas and klėtis help explain why a song’s klėtelė should not automatically be imagined as nothing more than a grain store.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 186
#Buildings
kluonas
A farm building used for storing and threshing grain crops; in some usage it also names a hay store. Identify the work being done before choosing an English equivalent.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 187–188
#Buildings
daržinė
Often a hay barn, although sources can use it for a building holding grain crops. The name alone does not mean a vegetable garden or vegetable store.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 187–188, 194
#Buildings
jauja
A building or room associated with storing and drying grain crops or flax. Meaning depends on place and period; some records also use the word for a bathing building.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 187–189
#Buildings
pirtis
Today usually a bathhouse or bathing room. Older regional usage can instead refer to a flax- or grain-drying room. Look first at the activities described in the account.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 188–189
#Buildings
ubladė
A separate building associated with Samogitian homesteads, containing a bread oven and sometimes used to prepare animal feed. It names a work space, not a dish.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 189
#Buildings
viralinė
A separate kitchen building or kitchen extension, particularly a summer cooking space. Food preparation in a homestead did not necessarily take place inside the dwelling.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 189
#Buildings
pūnė
An eastern Aukštaitian word for a livestock building. Combined with an animal name, it can specify accommodation for horses, pigs or other farm animals.
Source · Robertas Stunžinas, Ūkinių pastatų liaudies terminija, 2012, p. 190–192
#Work tools
girnos
A grain-grinding device with two stones. One stone is a girnapusė; the grammatically plural girnos can refer to a single milling device.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry girnos; PDF page 128
#Work tools
dalgis
A scythe: a bladed tool on a long shaft, used for cutting grass or grain crops. The shaft and sweeping action distinguish it from a hand sickle.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry dalgis; PDF page 14
#Work tools
žagrė
An old word for a ploughing implement, sometimes also a part such as its share. Check whether a museum label or work song means the complete tool or one component.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry žagrė; PDF page 8
#Clothing and textiles
klumpės
Footwear carved from wood or made with wooden soles. The word does not always mean an entirely wooden shoe; an object’s description identifies its construction.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry klumpė; PDF page 96
#Vessels and hearth
kubilas
A wide-bottomed barrel-like vessel used for liquids, stores or fermentation. In an older description it should not automatically be read as a modern outdoor bathing tub.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry kubilas; PDF page 72
#Clothing and textiles
kuodelis
A prepared bundle of flax, tow or wool for spinning. Beside a spinning wheel or distaff, kuodelis means fibre, not a bird’s crest or a hair bun.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry kuodelis; PDF page 100
#Work tools
ratelis
In a household account, often a treadle-driven spinning wheel. In another context the same word can mean a small wheel or a singing dance.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry ratelis; PDF page 56
#Work tools
rėtis
A sieve made with mesh stretched across a hoop, used to separate loose material. Use the description to establish its purpose and coarseness instead of treating every sieve as the same object.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry rėtis; PDF page 128
#Vessels and hearth
gelda
An elongated hollowed-out wooden vessel used for household work. The word can also mean a trough, so meat-curing and animal-feeding accounts describe different uses.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry gelda; PDF page 72
#Vessels and hearth
žarsteklis
A poker for moving embers and tending the fire in an oven or stove. It names a fire tool, not a baking vessel.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry žarsteklis; PDF page 28
#Clothing and textiles
drobė
Cloth commonly associated with linen clothing and household textiles. The dictionary also records other fibres, so the name alone does not prove that an object is pure linen.
Source · LKI Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian: entry drobė; PDF page 186
#No entries match this search.
Identify the work behind the word
An old household term often makes sense only when you know what someone was doing. A ratelis can turn during spinning, but dancers can also form a ratelis. In an older account, pirtis may concern bathing; elsewhere it can concern drying flax or grain.
Use these cards to check a word encountered in a museum, song, legend or family account. This is an explained selection, not a dictionary of every dialect variant.
Three questions about an unfamiliar object
What is it made from? What work does it do? Does the name denote the whole object or a component? These questions help distinguish girnos from one girnapusė, or establish which ploughing tool a narrator calls žagrė.
When recording a family recollection, add the place, approximate date and speaker’s own explanation. If a grandparent calls a building jauja, establish its function before replacing the word with a more familiar one.
How the meanings were checked
The explanations were written for this guide after checking entries in LKI’s Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian and Robertas Stunžinas’s study of farm-building terminology. Each card identifies a dictionary headword or a page in the study.
Building names are not always exact synonyms. Similar words can diverge across regions or historical periods; the cards preserve that distinction.