Noun: meli
Hyphenation:
Gender: Masculine
Declension:
Singular
Plural
| Nominative | meli |
| Accusative | melus |
| Genitive | melu |
| Dative | meliem |
| Instrumental | meliem |
| Locative | melos |
| Vocative | meli |
Sample Sentences
-
nevainīgi meli (an innocent lie, a fib)
-
skaidri meli (a clear, obvious lie)
-
balti, salti meli (an outrageous (lit. white, frosty) lie)
-
izgudrot, stāstīt melus (to invent, to tell lies)
-
atklāt melus (to detect, to reveal a lie)
Nouns inflected like meli
dienvidi,
saulgrieži,
putekšņi,
ziemeļi,
kūts mēsli,
griesti,
minerālmēsli,
kūtsmēsli,
austrumi,
īsviļņi,
mikroviļņi,
kāposti,
dubļi,
mieži,
milti,
murgi,
tauki,
mēsli,
kaļķi,
pelni, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
Nominal derived from an old (unattested) verb *melt, from Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to grind, to crush, to pound”). The semantic evolution was probably: “something ground, crushed (to small pieces)” > “(unimportant) blabber, gossip” (a meaning attested for the verb malt in some contexts; compare also Russian молоть (molotʹ, “to grind; to babble, to gossip”)) > “lie, untruth.” Cognates include Lithuanian melúoti (“to lie, to gossip”), mẽlas, dialectal mãlas, Russian мел (mel, “chalk”), мелкий (melkij, “fine, small, petty”), German Mehl (“flour”), Middle Irish mell (“error, delusion”), Ancient Greek μέλεος (méleos, “futile, superfluous, useless”), Tocharian A smale (“lie, untruth”). See: Russian Nouns '
мел', German Nouns '
Mehl'.
Verbs referencing "meli"
Latvian Nouns
melis.
Translations