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See also: gars, Gars, and GARs



From a derived adjective *gar-is of a masculine form *garyas, parallel to old neuter form *garyan (forest, tree), from Proto-Baltic *gar-, from the o-grade form *gʷor of Proto-Indo-European *gʷer- (> *h₁egʷr-), meaning “mountain, peak” and secondarily “forest” (via, e.g., “mountain surrounded by forest”), from which also “tree.” Therefore, there originally was a noun garš meaning “forest, tree”, which apparently left traces in certain Kurzeme placenames (e.g., Garatmatas, a forest in Matkule), but eventually disappeared, perhaps due to homophony with its derived adjective garš (< *garis). This adjective probably meant at first “(high) like a mountain,” “(tall, slender) like a tree” and then simply “high, tall” > “long.” Cognates include Lithuanian dialectal (reduplicated) gargãras, gargar̃as, gingãras (long, tall animal or person), Old Prussian garian (tree), Russian, Ukrainian гора́ (gorá, mountain), Bulgarian гора (gorá, forest, mountain), Czech hora (mountain) (dialectal also “forest of large trees”), Polish góra (mountain) (dialectal also “attic, loft”), Serbo-Croatian dialectal gòra (mountain, forest, tree), Hittite ẖegur- (cliff, peak, spike).[1]




garš (definite garais, comparative garāks, superlative visgarākais, adverb gari)

  1. long (having a relatively great distance from one end to the other)
    gara auklalong string
    garš galdslong table
    gara auguma cilvēkstall (lit. long height) person
    garas kājaslong legs
    gari matilong hair
    putns ar garu knābibird with a long beak
    gara ēnalong shadow
    gara iela, upelong street, river
    garais pirkststhe long finger (= middle finger)
    garie viļņilongwaves (radio waves with wavelength above 1,000 meters)
  2. (with numeric measurement in the accusative) long
    metru gara stiepleone-meter long wire
    noiet divdesmit kilometru garu ceļa gabaluto go, cover a 20-kilometer long stretch of road
  3. long (having more than usual or necessary, appropriate, desired length; covering more of the body than usual)
    garš mētelislong coat
    gara kleitalong dress
    garās zeķesstockings (lit. long socks)
    garie cimdilong gloves (e.g., women's gloves, up to the elbow)
  4. (of texts, speeches, etc.) long (having relatively large volume, relatively much content)
    garš romānslong novel
    gara poēmalong poem
    garš teikumslong, many-word sentence
  5. (of time periods) long (lasting for quite a while)
    gara ziemalong winter
    garie ziemas vakarilong winter evenings, nights
    garš mūžslong life
    garš laikslong, boring time (said whe none is bored)
    aiz gara laika, gara laika deļbecause of boredom (lit. long time)
    garais gadsleap (lit. long) year (with 366 days)
  6. (of events, activities) long (having a certain time duration)
    'garš ceļojumsa long journey
    ļoti gara sarunaa very long conversation
  7. (phonetics, phonology) long (pronounced with longer duration)
    garš patskanislong vowel
    gara zilbelong syllable
  8. (of body parts) outstretched, extended
    Mārtiņš rokas pēc iespējas garākas izstiepisMārtiņš stretched out (his) arms as far as possible




Derived terms[edit]


  1. ^ Karulis, Konstantīns (1992), “garš”, in Latviešu Etimoloģijas Vārdnīca (in Latvian), Rīga: AVOTS, →ISBN