Lie. <em>skeiris </em>‘našlys’?

Abstract

LITH. skeiris ‘WIDOWER’? Summary A textological analysis of the 19th century manuscript Litvanica czyli Wiadomosci o Litwie zebrane przez... Ambrozego Kossarzewskiego (the author A. Kasarauskas, who signed in Polish as Kossarzewski) shows that the form skeiris ‘widower’, listed in the multi-volume Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽ XII 790) with a reference only to this manuscript, actually does not exist: it is a pseudo-form due to a misreading of the word seiris ‘widower’ on p. 148 of the aforesaid manuscript. The term for widower seiris ( seirys ) is a form encountered in Old Lithuanian writings, the dialects of West Lithuania, and in Lithuanian folklore (it is noteworthly that Kasarauskas, who collected Lithuanian folklore, is also a native of Samogitia, i. e. of West Lithuania). The author of this article discusses the origin of the word seiris ( seirys ) ‘widower’ in her study of Affinity Terms of the Lithuanian Language : Rūta Buivydienė, Lietuvių kalbos vedybų giminystės pavadinimai (antras pataisytas leidimas), Vilnius, 1997.