laivas

laivas f

1. inflection of laiva:
   1. genitive singular
   2. nominative/vocative/accusative plural

Variants within Lithuanian include dialectal lai̇̃vė, archaic lai̇̃va; Latvian laiva is also cognate. Outside of Baltic, the relationship by borrowing to Proto-Finnic *laiva (“ship”)^[1] (Finnish laiva (“ship; nave”), Estonian laev, Livonian lōja) is undisputed, leaving the question of which family had the word first. It is now identified as a borrowing from Proto-Germanic *flawją (cf. Old Norse fley (“boat, raft”)) into Finnic and thence Baltic, showing the Finnic sound law *vj > jv established by Koivulehto (1970).^[2]

Earlier, a Baltic inherited origin had been sought. Karulis took the word to be perhaps originally used by Curonian fishermen and later spread to all the Eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, and offered the internal etymology Proto-Baltic *leiw-, *laiw-, from Proto-Indo-European *ley- with an extra -w, from *el-ey, from *Heh₃l- (“to bend, to turn”); this theory would make the original meaning “bent, concave (object)”.^[3]

lai̇̃vas m (plural laivai̇̃) stress pattern 4

1. ship (large water vessel)