From a (no longer extant) verb žirgt (“to liven up, to fresehn up”) (the r follows the pattern of stingt (“to harden, stiffen”), stingrs (“firm, strong, strict”)), from Proto-Baltic *žirgt(e)y, from *žerg-, *žirg-, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰer- (“to shine, to glow”) with an extra -g (without this -g, this stem yielded Lithuanian žìrti (“to sparkle”)). In Latvian, the Proto-Baltic initial ž was conserved, maybe for onomatopoeic expressive reasons; note that the (possibly) related term zirgs (“horse”) has the expected initial z. The meaning changed from “(that which) shines, glows” to “happy, cheerful, joyous” and finally “lively, brisk, alert.”
žirgts (definite žirgtais, comparative žirgtāks, superlative visžirgtākais, adverb žirgti)
masculine (vīriešu dzimte) | feminine (sieviešu dzimte) | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
singular (vienskaitlis) |
plural (daudzskaitlis) |
singular (vienskaitlis) |
plural (daudzskaitlis) | ||||||
nominative (nominatīvs) | žirgts | žirgti | žirgta | žirgtas | |||||
accusative (akuzatīvs) | žirgtu | žirgtus | žirgtu | žirgtas | |||||
genitive (ģenitīvs) | žirgta | žirgtu | žirgtas | žirgtu | |||||
dative (datīvs) | žirgtam | žirgtiem | žirgtai | žirgtām | |||||
instrumental (instrumentālis) | žirgtu | žirgtiem | žirgtu | žirgtām | |||||
locative (lokatīvs) | žirgtā | žirgtos | žirgtā | žirgtās | |||||
vocative (vokatīvs) | — | — | — | — | |||||