Vārds ģīmis „Latviešu valodas vēsturiskajā vārdnīcā” un dažādos latviešu valodas vēstures posmos

The Historical Dictionary of Latvian (LVVV) includes written sources of Latvian of the 16th and 17th centuries. At the moment there are about 2000 entries and the electronic dictionary is constantly supplemented with new entries. LVVV is made on the base of the Corpus of early written Latvian texts, every entry has all meanings of the word in the early sources and the first and the last fixed example in this period (16–17th cc.). The Corpus of early written Latvian texts allows to determine the time of entry of words in written language more precisely. The article is devoted to the word ģīmis, one of the entries of LVVV, such formatives as ģīmēt, apģīmēt, noģīmēt, noģīmēšana etc. are also included in the dictionary. The word ģīmis is a Lithuanianism (from Lithuanian gỹmis), which in written Latvian appears in the 17th century. The Historical Dictionary of Latvian shows that the word ģīmis is used for the first time in the works (1631–1654) of Georg Mancelius, and it has several meanings: 1) face; 2) appearance, look; 3) image. Apparently the word ģīmis has entered in the written language from subdialects. As it is characteristic of many Lithuanianisms, it is borrowed with only one meaning of Lithuanian gỹmis, namely ‘face’. In subdialects the word ģīmis is widespread in almost all the territory of Latvia, except Latgale, whereas Lithuanian gỹ mis nowadays is found in some East Aukshtaitian and West Aukshtaitian subdialects. The word ģīmis is mentioned in the 17th centuries dictionaries – in the dictionary “Lettus” (1638) of G. Mancelius and in both dictionary manuscripts (second part of 17th century) of Christoph Fürecker. The word ģīmis is frequently used in the Bible translated by Ernst Glück – both in the New (1685) and the Old (1689–1694) Testament. It is interesting to follow up the fate of the word ģīmis during the development of Latvian written language. Unlike several other Lithuanianisms found in the texts of G. Mancelius, ģīmis has been actively used henceforth, it is mentioned in 18–20th century dictionaries, for example, in the dictionaries of G. F. Stender (1789), K. K. Ulmann (1872), J. Dravnieks (1910) etc. In the 19th century several formatives, as noģīmēt, noģīmējums, noģīmis, ģīmetne, were actively used. Though in the first half of the 20th century the word seja ‘face’ becomes the word of literary language, the word ģīmis is still used nowadays, even included in neologisms, but in dictionaries it is marked as colloquial speech. The word ģīmis is very often used in fiction, and in wellknown stable word groups and phraseological units, for example, pēc kāda ģīmja un līdzības ‘in one’s own image, after one’s likeness’, rādīt skābu ģīmi ‘to pull a long face’, saviebt ģīmi ‘to make a face’ etc.