Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word Gudija. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word Gudija, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say Gudija in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word Gudija you have here. The definition of the word Gudija will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofGudija, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
From gudas(“Belarusian”) + -ija, from southeastern dialectal gudėti(“start speaking another dialect or language”). The prior meaning is believed to have been "foreigner, unable to speak Lithuanian" (compare Proto-Slavic*němьcь(“foreigner, non-Slav, specifically of Germanic peoples”) from *němъ(“mute, unclear or incomprehensible speaker”)), and later narrowed to refer to East Slavic peoples specifically.
Further etymology unclear, but possibly from Gothic*𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰(*guta, “Goth”), first adopted to refer to the Goths, then - to foreign peoples in general.
^ Kamuntavičius, Rūstis (2021) “Dėl Gudijos pavadinimo”, in VLKK, National Commission on the Lithuanian Language, archived from the original on 1 January 2022
^ Gudavičius, Edvardas ((Can we date this quote?)) “Gudai”, in VLE, Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija
