Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek μέλι (méli). Coined by missionaries for the 1839 translation of the Bible. The missionaries had considered transcribing honey into Hawaiian as either hani (“flirt, act coy”) or as honi (“kiss”). The two were considered unacceptable as being too impure and as such the missionaries went to Ancient Greek to coin a word.
meli
meli
meli m
mēlī
See melis.
meli m
See mele.
meli f
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”).
meli m (1st declension)
singular (vienskaitlis) | plural (daudzskaitlis) | |
---|---|---|
nominative (nominatīvs) | — | meli |
accusative (akuzatīvs) | — | melus |
genitive (ģenitīvs) | — | melu |
dative (datīvs) | — | meliem |
instrumental (instrumentālis) | — | meliem |
locative (lokatīvs) | — | melos |
vocative (vokatīvs) | — | meli |
< 3 | 4 | 5 > |
---|---|---|
Cardinal : meli Ordinal : meligeci | ||
meli (Raguileo spelling)
meli
Ultimately from Latin mel, perhaps via Spanish miel.
meli
meli (Cyrillic spelling мели)
From Vulgar Latin *melem m or f, from Latin mel n.
meli m
Borrowed from Omani Arabic ميل (mēl), from English mail, in reference to the steamers that brought mail.
Audio (Kenya) | (file) |
meli (n class, plural meli)
Compare Tocharian A malañ.
meli