kev

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search
See also: Kev, keV, and KeV

Volapük

[edit]

Noun

[edit]

kev (nominative plural kevs)

  1. cave, cavern

Declension

[edit]

White Hmong

[edit]

Etymology

[edit]

From Proto-Hmong-Mien *kləuX (road, way).[1] Cognate with Western Xiangxi Miao [Fenghuang] geud, Iu Mien jauv.

Possibly related to either Old Chinese (OC *kreː, *kreː, “street, way”) or (OC *[kə.l]ˤuʔ) (B-S), though whether via borrowing or via inheritance from a common source is unclear.

Pronunciation

[edit]

Noun

[edit]

kev (classifier: txoj (lengths), tsem (sections of road), ceg (sections or directions of a journey))

  1. road, street
  2. matters, business, affairs
    Koj muaj kev dab tsi?What is your business? What do you want?

Classifier

[edit]

kev

  1. used to nominalize the word it modifies, used to indicate "the way of ...": -ness
    kev mob kev tuagsickness and death

References

[edit]
  • Heimbach, Ernest E. (1979) White Hmong — English Dictionary[1], SEAP Publications, →ISBN, pages 80-1.
  1. ^ Ratliff, Martha (2010) Hmong-Mien language history (Studies in Language Change; 8), Camberra, Australia: Pacific Linguistics, →ISBN, page 275.