A Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary
Sources
Again and again psychological principles (where will the student look for the word, how does one guard him against confusions in the best possible manner) clash with grammatical ones (base word, derivative) and with the typographical utilization of space, with the well-organized appearance of the printed page etc. Thus it happens that the superficial critic will meet with seemingly arbitrary inconsequences everywhere, but those inconsequences are caused by compromises between essential viewpoints.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wörterbuch für Volksschulen 1926
And if, enraged he cried, Heaven meant to shed
Its keenest vengeance on the guilty head,
The drudgery of words the damn’d would know,
Doom’d to write Lexicons in endless woe.
Samuel Johnson
What is included in this dictionary?
This dictionary aims, as far as possible, to give an English equivalent for the entire lexical corpus of the Georgian language, ancient, classical and modern, as well as literary, colloquial and dialectal. We have therefore included virtually all the entries from the eight-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language (henceforth KEGL) published between 1950 and 1964; these entries have been cross-checked with, and in some instances expanded from, Kita Tschenkéli’s and Yolanda Marchev’s Georgisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch of 1965-1974. The second major source is a database (listing about two million word forms and their frequency) of the Georgian daily and weekly press from 1999-2002 compiled by Irak’li Iak’obashvili and made searchable on the internet by Dr Levan Chkhaidze and Dato Jashi. Thirdly, we have used a searchable electronic version, and a list of all word forms, of forty substantial texts by contemporary writers, predominantly novelists. The fourth major source are Ilia Abuladze’s and Zurab Sarjveladze’s compilations and dictionaries of Old Georgian. We have used only selectively about thirty dictionaries of the various dialects of modern Georgian and dictionaries from various branches of science and technology. A number of other sources have also contributed to our corpus, the 19th and 20th century Georgian-Russian dictionaries (notably by Nik’o and Davit Chubinashvili and Ketevan Datik’ashvili) We have exploited the nine volumes of Ivan Javakhishvili’s Materials of Georgia’s Cottage Industries and Crafts, as well as notes to major editions of literary texts and of folklore. Finally, we have incorporated a substantial body of modern vulgar, colloquial and specialist expressions, much of it from field work carried out by Dr Laurence Broers between 2001 and 2004.
We incorporate into the main body of the dictionary elements usually put in separate sections. Thus proper nouns (names of places and persons) and abbreviations intermingle with common nouns and unabbreviated forms. The rationale for this is that modern Georgian lacks capital letters and does not always mark abbreviations with full stops, so that such forms often resemble, and can even be identical with, ordinary words.
We also include, as does the Explanatory Dictionary, for the sake of users who do not have a perfect command of Georgian, individual bound morphemes, with a short explanation of their semantic functions and grammatical properties. Morphemes are included where they are productive, i.e. where by combining them new words can still be formed. Non-productive suffixes such as -Jeradi are not listed separately on the grounds that every word that has this suffix already has an entry and new words are unlikely to be created with this suffix. On the other hand, suffixes such as -Tan are productive, almost infinitely so, and therefore have an entry
We have tried to err on the side of inclusiveness; thus a number of words invented by poets, or mistaken, even invented, by earlier lexicographers, and never used again, have filtered through: better to include an unknown than exclude a known. The meaning of some rare words used between 1200 and 1800 in ambiguous contexts is still a matter of guesswork, even when they occur in translation from Greek etc, and the marker † (‘obsolete’) can also be taken as a warning that the translation may possibly be inaccurate. We do not assume a knowledge of Russian among users: Russian words frequently used in Georgian (e.g. names of parts of a car) will thus be listed.
Exclusions
We exclude a very few words, such as hyphenated forms where the total meaning of the hyphenated form is identical with the sum of the meaning of each separate component. In a number of cases where a verbal noun ending -eba and the corresponding verb ending in -ebs have a more seldom attested alternative form in -oba/obs, or vice versa, we frequently omit the non-standard form. Similarly where a past participle passive in -uli has a more rarely attested alternative form in -ili (or vice versa), this too might not be listed. (If the alternative forms are frequently attested, then of course they are listed.) We exclude a number of Russian words often used in colloquial Georgian which are nevertheless consciously (and ironically) used as alien expressions. We exclude a very few Soviet, especially political, terms which can be instantly recognized when transliterated into English and which never had a real substance for those who uttered or heard them. Some Germanisms such as Landsturm, and some Soviet compounds that do not reflect any reality but are self-explanatory (e.g. electric rainmaker) are also excluded. International words are given in all variants when the meaning in English differs, or their international origin is not immediately obvious. If they are equivalent in meaning for Georgian and English, then one example, e.g. absenteeism, is given, while related words that would follow it, e.g. absenteeist, will be omitted.
We omit certain non-standard forms that can be boldly called ‘incorrect’, for instance forms where Greek ch is transliterated as H not K, forms where Greek h is, under Russian influence, transliterated as g-, or Russian -g- is transliterated -G - instead of -g-
Many Russian words can be considered to be assimilated (with Georgian prefixes and suffixes), and like the influx of Anglicisms over the last fifteen years, we have had to make rough decisions, based on the frequency of their use, on whether they have been assimilated in the Georgian language, just as seven hundred years ago a Georgian lexicographer would have had to discriminate between Persian words used in Georgian discourse. Many new words transliterated from foreign languages have several renderings, e.g. ‘killer’ can be kileri or Kileri, and this leads to multiple entries. Bill Clinton appears as klintoni, KlinToni, Klintoni, klinToni. Mistaken transliterations from western languages (e.g. pakti instead of paKti, ‘pact’) are not usually listed. In transliteration from Russian words may or may not have the soft consonant transliterated (e.g. pliaZi/plaZi ‘beach’), and usually Russian vowels are phonetically represented (pabeda for ‘pobeda’, ‘victory’, or the Pobeda make of car). All we can do is list the most common forms; otherwise the user may have to substitute aspirate for non-aspirate plosive, or -a- for -o- to find the listed form.
The English renderings are British, not American. We have tried to choose as neutral a register as is consistent with translating from another language and culture. One exception is the occasional use of antiquated English, e.g. using hither to indicate the orientation of Georgian verbs with a prefix/infix (-)mo and thither for corresponding verbs beginning with mi- that indicate motion away from the speaker.
We have aimed to give as explicit an interpretation of the meaning of a Georgian word and the phrases and idioms in which it is commonly met. But we have not had the space to give a full list of English synonyms, or to expand on the meaning and usage of the English equivalents. The dictionary is aimed primarily at an English-speaker interpreting Georgian text or discourse. It is intended only secondarily to be useful to a Georgian seeking to compose an English sentence. We hope that the Georgian reader will nevertheless find this dictionary useful, in conjunction with such monolingual dictionaries as the Oxford English Dictionary or Hornby’s Dictionary of English for Advanced Learners. Georgians may also find a number of Georgian words more accurately defined than in previous dictionaries, or even defined for the first time.
How are Georgian words entered?
Standardized forms
For the head word we have tried to give the standardized modern forms, following the 1998 edition of orthographical dictionary by Topuria and Gigineishvili. This is reflected by the new rules for hyphenization, the very complex recommendations for including or excluding a -v- or -n- before certain vowels or suffixes of verb stems. However, we give alternative (earlier, or obsolete) spellings, marking them as non-standard (◊), or alternatively marking the standard form as (st). The grammatical information we give (e.g. aorist and perfect of verbs, a ‘base’ form from which version forms or intransitives may be said to be derived) usually follows the modern standardized forms. In quotations, however, the user will meet non-standard forms, in cases where the editors did not feel they had the right to update or edit a major writer, or normalize a proverb. Some grammarians will lament our decision to follow modern standards, for instance in the omission of the -n- between the stem and ending of the perfect tense in single-argument transitive verbs: hence we write, as do all modern journalists and most modern fiction writers, utiria not utirnia (‘sb has wept’). (Again, in illustrative quotes, especially from major poets, we will include the intercalary -n-.) Many modern norms (such as the insertion of h- as a third person indirect object marker before stems beginning with b- are more honoured in the breach than in the observation, but we nevertheless follow them.
Non standard forms marked ◊ may be non-standard because they are considered sub-literary, barbaric, or obsolete, or they may be classified as such because they are a ‘passportless’ dialect form, recorded without a note of the dialect origin.
The grammatical information we almost always give (in nouns, for example the irregular ‘strong’ genitive, a dative which preserves the final -i of the root; in verbs, for example the third person singular aorist and perfect) will sometimes be omitted. Usually such omissions will be because we have not found these forms attested (expecially in obsolete or dialect words). The governance of multi-argument verbs is indicated with (S), (IO), (DO) to indicate the subject, direct object or indirect object. In addition we give, where the form is common and we have space, the 2nd person singular of ‘strong’ aorists, e.g. mokali ‘You killed sb’ bracketed after the 3p aorist mokla.
Multiple forms
Many Georgian verbs, particularly onomatopœic words imitating real sound, foreign words in transliteration, words of dialect origin, words found chiefly in older texts, have different spellings in which a voiced consonant may be substituted for an unvoiced, an aspirated for a non-aspirated. This has resulted in multiple entries, some only brief, but all cross-referenced to the form that can be considered standard.
In other cases, particularly adjectives and participles, multiple forms arise because of the presence of optional stems between root and ending. We put these optional elements in round brackets; the marker lst indicates that the long form, including the bracketed material is standard; the marker sst indicates that the short form, omitting the bracketed letters, is standard. If there is no indication, then either form is acceptable.
Homonyms
Homonyms are NOT listed separately. Different words with the same spelling will be found under one heading: the future participle gasaHvevi ‘to be wrapped’, and the noun gasaHvevi ‘a turn off’, or gava ‘will go out’ and the noun gava ‘upper leg’, will be found numbered separately, with an indication in italics of the part of speech, but under the same entry.
Classification
In most cases we have followed KEGL in classifying words as nouns, verbs etc. We have, however, simplified KEGL’s system, and have, for example, reclassified past, future and negative participles as adjectives if in fact they are a combination of a participle with a noun: thus mimGebi ‘receptive’ is an active participle, but laKmimGebi ‘easy to lacquer’ is re-classified as an adjective. The boundaries between adjective and participle, as between noun and verbal noun, or between a compound word and a prefixed word, are fuzzy, so that we must apologize for a lack of total consistency.
Nouns, adjectives, pronouns
Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are given in their nominative singular form. (In a few cases the singular is never used, so the plural is listed, and a very few nouns occur only in the genitive case.) If a noun is regular in its declension (i.e. nominative ends in -i, -a, -e and the genitive ends in -is, the dative in -s, or the nominative ends in -o/-u and the genitive in -os/-us), no further information is given. Otherwise the genitive ending is indicated in brackets. Nouns (especially proper nouns such as alibi) that keep their final -i in the dative and ergative cases have their dative ending -is given in brackets. Case forms are indicated in the ‘short’ form. (Long case endings have a final -a which occur in certain positions, i.e. when genitive comes after nominative or when the word is followed by a monosyllable, and these will be found in this dictionary only in quotations and examples.)
Proper nouns (names of persons and places) are given and marked N, especially when they are not instantly recognizable as such. Thus Tbilisi ‘Tbilisi’ will not be included, but misuri ‘Missouri’ will.
Pronouns, especially deictic, are highly irregular; the standard (and some non-standard) case forms are given in brackets after the nominative entry form.
Where a stem vowel is elided before cases other than the nominative, dative and ergative, then this vowel is placed within square brackets, thus Tvali (‘eye’) has genitive Tvalis, but Tv[a]li (‘gemstone’) Tvlis.
Adverbs
Adverbs in -ad are not listed if their meaning can be automatically inferred from the adjective ending in -i from which they are derived. Where the adverb has wider or idiomatically different semantics than the adjective, it is listed separately. Likewise adverbs in -ad which are derived from the future participle ending in -i are listed separately only if their meaning (in order to do something) or usage differs from what the future participle means (something to be done, for doing), or if they have different formal features. When the adjective exists only theoretically e.g. gamoumSvidobebeli ‘who does not take leave’, and the adverbial form is normal e.g. gamoumSvidobeblad ‘without saying good-bye’, the adverbial form is made the entry form.
Verbs
Verbs are listed more exhaustively than in any previous bilingual Georgian dictionary. As in KEGL, we give not only the verbal noun (‘masdar’) but an entry for the third person singular form (or plural when the singular does not exist) of the present tense or future tense, both active (transitive) form and passive (intransitive) form, with markers for the indirect object in the third person. This rule is breached for a few verbs prefixed by mo-, where the indirect object cannot be third person. Here we substitute the first-person object marker -m for the third-person marker (Ø-, s-, h-) to indicate that the indirect object of such verbs can be only 1st or 2nd person, e.g. momkerjavs ‘will be prejudiced against me’, as opposed to mihkerjavs ‘will be prejudiced against him/her/it’. Some verbs are found only in 2nd person forms such as gagimarJos ‘Good luck!’, gagiHaria, ‘Believe me!’ Such expressions are no longer true verbs, and they are given a separate entry where they have an idiomatic meaning which makes them more interjections, adverbs etc
If the verb has relative (‘version’) forms (with the root prefixed by a-, e-, i-, u-), these too will have separate entries arranged in alphabetical order. Where a transitive verb has an indirect object which is marked by h- or s- prefixed to the root, such forms are listed not in alphabetical order but straight after the entry without that prefix: to indicate this suspension of alphabetical order, the h-/s- is printed in superscript before the root. In certain fossilized cases, e.g. sdeK! ‘Stop!’ the prefix will be counted alphabetically.
Verbs which have, apart from a direct and/or indirect object, a beneficiary that is indicated by a vowel before the root are classified as follows: vo indicates a transitive verb in the objective version, with the 3rd person version prefix u-. Transitive verbs which use the pre-root vowel i- to indicate that they are reflexive have the classification vs to indicate transitive verb in the subjective version; the very few verbs with the pre-root prefix a- indicating the surface on which something happens are marked as v sup to mean a transitive verb in the superessive version. Intransitive verbs with the pre-root vowel e- indicating a beneficiary or participant in the action other than the subject are in this dictionary not considered versional verbs, but are simply marked vi2, an intransitive verb with two arguments.
After a 3rd person present/future indicative form of the verb, as in KEGL, we give the 3rd person singular aorist and perfect forms. If the other forms of the aorist are not predictable from the 3rd person singular, we given the 2nd person singular and, occasionally the 3rd person plural. Other irregular forms of the present, imperfect tense etc follow the perfect form. Many irregular verbs (what Ak’ak’i Shanidze called ‘idiosyncratic’ verbs) also have a separate entry for the aorist, perfect or imperfect tense, wherever these forms are not immediately identifiable with the present or future indicative.
After a verbal noun (masdar), we give in brackets the 3rd person present or future forms from which it can be said to be ‘derived’: users should consult the entry for the present/future for the maximum information.
Verb aspect
We have treated the Georgian category of aspect from a liberal point of view; the ‘aspect’ of a verb is indicated by the English translation. If we translate a Georgian verb with an English present tense, the verb is imperfective; if we use a future tense, the verb is perfective. It often happens that a Georgian verb can be either imperfective or perfective; the English translation will give the present or future, depending on the most common usage, but the verb will be marked as I/P, both imperfective and perfective.
When a verb has no prefix in the present tense and is imperfective, the most common meanings of the verb are arranged according to the prefix that verb takes (making it in theory perfective) in the aorist and perfect tenses. In theory, if not in practice, the meaning of any prefixed perfective verb is to be found in the unprefixed imperfective. We therefore give at the end of an entry a list of all the other prefixes with which that verb form may be encountered, and to these prefixed forms we refer the user.
Causatives
Causative in Georgian have two basic meanings: ‘has sth done by somebody’, or ‘makes/ helps/lets sb do something’. Both meanings use the same construction – the somebody who is made to do sth is an indirect object, the something that somebody is made to do is a direct object, but the translation given may be one or the other meaning, whichever is the most likely. Thus in translating negative and future participles and causatives, the user may have to consider the alternative meaning. Causatives are marked vc.
Participles
Participles are translated without any indication of the verb’s present or future indicative form, since the masdar or finite forms from which they are derived are usually easily identified. Certain participles have dual meanings: for instance, the negative participle with the prefix u- and typically with the suffix -eli may mean either sth ‘not done’ or sth ‘not do-able’. The translation may account only for the more likely meaning. Likewise the future participle prefixed sa- and typically ending in -eli has two meanings: sth ‘to be done’ and sth ‘for doing sth’, and here too the translation may not always account for both potential meanings.
For non-finite forms of the verb we give the masdar and all the participles (present, future, negative, past passive) separate entries. The boundaries between a participle and an adjective, or between a verbal noun (‘masdar’) and a noun are fuzzy, and we have tended to define participle forms as adjectives unless they correspond to finite forms of a verb. It has proved impossible to reach absolute consistency, but we have tended to classify words according to their semantics, rather than their form.
Such a multiplicity of entries (sometimes twenty finite entries for a verb listed in conventional dictionaries by one entry) inflates the size of our dictionary but will, we hope, economize the time employed by the user. All other procedures seemed to us to have more disadvantages than advantages. Listing forms under a masdar is arbitrary, since many verbs do not have a masdar, others have a masdar which cannot easily be ascertained, and the masdar itself has such a range of meanings that it does little to explain the meaning of a finite form. The method chosen by Tschenkéli to list verbs by root, then by prefixes, is satisfying for a professional linguist, but it can force a lay user to search for an hour to find a single specific finite form. Until an electronic system is perfected for unifying the prodigious numbers of forms of a Georgian verb into one entry, the path we have chosen seems to be the least of all the evils.
Verb classification
We have simplified considerably the classification of Georgian verbs accepted among linguists and used in KEGL. Verbs are classified as transitive, by the criterion that in the second series of tenses (aorist and second subjunctive) the subject or agent is in the ergative case. If they have a subject and one object (usually direct) then there is no classification. The transitivity of a verb is indicated by the presence of sb/sth (somebody/something) in the English translation. If a verb has only a subject (such as tiris, weeps), then it is classified as vt1, i.e. a transitive verb with only one argument. If a transitive verb has subject, direct object and indirect object, then it is classified as vt3, a transitive verb with three arguments. (A few transitive verbs have four arguments: they may be marked vt4, e.g. mixmev ‘You give the horse some food on my behalf’, or the causative aravis damiXagvrino Xemi patara bixi ‘Don’t let anyone oppress my little lad’, which will be marked as vc4.) A transitive verb with two arguments is marked vt2 only where it is not apparent from the semantics of the English or from the form of the Georgian that there is a direct object as well as a subject/agent.
Otherwise, if a verb has its subject in the nominative case in the aorist tense, then it is classified as intransitive, vi. Where it has an indirect object as well (e.g. gamoudis ‘comes out for sb’, ezrdeba ‘sb’s sb (child) grows up’), then it is classified as vi2. A few intransitive verbs have three arguments. These are marked vi3, e.g. daesesHeba vi3 will borrow sth from sb, daejaleba vi3 will force sth on sb, or moundeba ‘will need sth for sth’: PoTamde or dGes movundi siaruls It took me two days to walk to Poti.
An intransitive verb is usually followed by an indication of the transitive form from which it can be said to be derived, and more information on the semantics of the verb may be found under the transitive verb heading.
Other types of verb
Thus we have eliminated the category of ‘middle’ verbs. A limited number of verbs describe a state of affairs (sth lying about, for instance): these are listed as v stat, or v stat2 where there is a second argument (e.g. sb, the indirect object, has sth lying about). A very few basic verbs, where the person experiencing or possessing is regarded as the indirect object and the thing experienced or possessed is the subject, are listed as v inv, inverted verb. In such cases a number of examples of usage are given to clarify how the verb behaves.
Verbs with varying governance are noted, e.g. aicevs which is transitive in the first and second series but intransitive in the third series is marked vt in aor, vi in pf (aicia, aceula) will rise up.
Other parts of speech
Georgian and English conjunctions and interjections do not differ in any major way. Postpositions are another matter. We have separated out from adverbs of place and time those that also function as postpositions with meaning of English prepositions (e.g. beneath, on top, during, along) and we indicate with pag or pad that they are postpositions following a noun in the genitive or in the dative.
Old Georgian
Old Georgian (‡) is an all-embracing term for the language as recorded from the 5th to 11th centuries AD. Its full corpus is still not known, and any dictionary including Old Georgian must be considered provisional. We classify a word as ‡ when it is attested from that time and when it has since the twelfth century fallen into disuse or has acquired a different meaning. Many ‡ forms, especially verbs, are not attested in all forms, so that we refrain from inventing, say, an aorist or perfect tense to list after a present/future form. Over seven centuries a wide range of spellings occur, and we follow Abuladze and (with reservations) Sarjveladze in deciding which forms can be regarded as standard. As with dialect, we have modernized spelling, so that Old Georgian letters are merged with modern ones (e.g. Q with H), and the noun ending -y is deleted. Old Georgian non-syllabic u (sometimes written U) will be rendered as v when there is an identical modern Georgian entry; otherwise it will be entered as u. Old Georgian w and Q are rendered as vi and H respectively. Hyphenization for Old Georgian often depends on the whim of the transcriber, and we have not been able to achieve consistency. In translating Old Georgian words we have tried to be as neutral as possible, but in the case of words found in Georgian translations of the Bible, we have on a number of occasions felt justified in using the language of the King James Version as the nearest English equivalent
Dialect words
Some Georgian dialects (Pshavian, Imeretian) have been exhaustively studied; a few such as Jewish Georgian have been almost totally ignored. In all cases, writers who reproduce dialect and ethnologists who collect it, transcribe words in various ways. We have chosen the most widespread and conservative method, using only letters, prefixes and suffixes of standard Georgian, so that effectively the dialect element is preserved largely in the root and in the semantic interpretation, and no attempt is made at a phonetic rendering of a dialect word. Thus the Old Georgian Q found in a number of highland dialects, or the glottal stop R and ultra-short i used in rendering Tush, or the umlauted vowels of Ingilo have been replaced by the standard literary letters. Likewise the modified preverbs of some dialects, especially when preceding version vowels, have been normalized, hence dae for Imeretian and Jewish dee, mo- and Se- for Pshavian ma‑, Sa-. Where a dialect (such as Khevsur) used G- as a third-person indirect object prefix, we have treated the G as an integral part of the word, not as h- or s- which do not affect the alphabetical listing order.
Georgian is very rich in dialects, and they preserve names of realia and concepts lost to the literary and metropolitan language and, for all the problems of including non-standard forms among standard, we have tried to do so as fully as possible. After a dialect word, we indicate by Im, Tu etc its provenance, from Imeretia, Tushetia etc. We have excluded material from dialects (apart from Jewish) spoken outside Georgia, the extinct Mozdok, the Turkish Georgian and, with one or two exceptions, the Fereidan dialect in Iran. Our samples of Acharian and Ingilo, where the Turkic substratum plays a major part, are limited.
Anglicization of Georgian geographical names
Where the Georgian name in English is a straightforward transliteration, we do not usually give it. In some cases we have preferred old-fashioned versions for Georgian geographical names, e.g. Kakhetia, instead of Kakheti, for kaHeTi, simply because English already accepts such forms as Ingushetia and does not recognize the suffix -eTi. Here again, total consistency has not been achieved.
Classification of register
Just as a word has to be classified as a part of speech (noun, verb, transitive or not, etc), so its register (colloquial, literary, bookish, obsolete, vulgar) has to be classified. We have slightly simplified the classification found in KEGL : ‘poetic’, ‘bookish’, ‘artificial’ are all classified simply as ‘bookish’ (fl). ‘Incorrect’, ‘barbaric’ have been called just ‘non-standard’ (◊). In other cases we have heeded the frequency lists in our data-bases and dared to re-classify words. Much that was ’obsolete’ in Stalin’s day (religious terminology for instance) is now standard again; much that was colloquial or incorrect is now generally accepted. Conversely, we have felt it necessary to mark as ‘Soviet’ words that have fallen out of use, or acquired ironic overtones since 1989, and to mark as ‘Russian’ words where a modern Georgian speaker is aware of the fact that the word has a Russian etymology or is a calque of Russian. This is not an etymological dictionary, however, and with rare exceptions we have indicated the foreign provenance of a word only when that helps to explain the context in which it is used.
We have used the word ‘vulgar’ in the strongest sense as a warning that this word should not be used by foreigners unsure of the company they are in and that, in some cases, users of such words should be treated with circumspection.
The word colloquial (©) indicates a range of meanings from informal to jargon, and drug addicts’ or thieves’ cant. These words should be used with caution, if only because they quickly become outdated.
Georgian benefits (or suffers) from much multiplicity of forms: verbs, participles particularly, may have forms with or without suffixes. We have judged by the frequency of usage by contemporary writers and journalists whether certain forms are more acceptable than others. Where this is so, we use abbreviations such as st, lst, sst to indicate that a form is standard, or that the long form (including material in round brackets) is standard, or that the short form (excluding material in brackets) is standard. Where several forms are used in modern Georgian with similar frequency, we have abstained from any such judgements. Very often, for instance, the short form is preferred for a participle used adjectivally, but the long form for its adverbial use.
Illustrative examples
We have chosen examples firstly to illustrate a word’s (especially a verb’s) semantic range, secondly to show (especially a verb’s) grammatical relations, i.e. which case it governs for indirect and direct objects. Examples have been taken from real texts (some previously used in dictionaries, others not). Other examples come from informants. In a few cases the tense or person of a verb is changed to show more clearly what is the direct and what the indirect object, or to avoid having to specify the gender of the subject and the clumsy anti-sexist device of naming it as he/she/it. Transitive verbs in the present series use the identical case (Dative) for indirect and direct objects: therefore we try to give examples of usage, where the governance in Georgian does not correspond with that of English, in the aorist, so that the direct object will be in the nominative and indirect object in the dative: e.g. aikra kabas Heli ‘She struck her hand against her gown’. Likewise, where it is not clear what marks the logical subject and logical indirect object, examples become clearer if one of the arguments is 1st or 2nd person: e.g. vebralebodiT, ‘He was sorry for us’.
We have included a large number of proverbs, even those where the proverbial wisdom is not always obvious, and have usually preferred a literal translation to searching for a misleadingly corresponding English proverb: occasionally a literal version follows a creative interpretation.
In certain areas (e.g. folk customs, children’s games, culinary terms, cottage crafts) we have decided that the reader’s interests may be served by a brief encyclopædic description, particularly when Georgian realia have no corresponding word in English.
Particularly with verbs, we have gone to some lengths to define the semantics not only by the choice of English verb but by suggesting by a bracketed italicized noun before or after the verb what the most likely or typical subject or object of the verb is. (If the example of a subject or object is not italicized, this indicates that the noun is implicit in the meaning of the verb.)
In illustrations the head word will be substituted by ~ only if the illustration shows it in the entry (i.e. nominative case, or third-person singular present/future indicative. Otherwise the head word will be reproduced in full.
Before using the dictionary, please open pages xxxvi-xxxviii and study the key to abbreviations used in this dictionary: they give a great deal of grammatical and semantic information.
How do I find the ‘dictionary’ form of a word
There should be few problems finding the dictionary form of a noun, adjective or pronoun, where the nominative singular is easily deduced from the oblique cases or the plural. Ninety-nine percent of all difficulties for translators arise from a verb whose dictionary entry (verbal noun and, at least in this dictionary third-person present or future indicative) is not easily deduced from one of thousands of possible forms in which it is heard or seen. The user requires a minimal level of grammatical knowledge that allows the person, tense, version and transitivity of any regular verb to be recognized. Again, conventional grammars have paradigms of conjugation that should facilitate this process of recognition. Any grammar of Georgian has easy to follow tables of declensions and conjugations. (We recommend the second edition of George Hewitt’s Georgian: A Learner’s Grammar.)
How to find a verb’s dictionary form
First of all, if a verb is in a ‘second series’ tense (aorist, 2nd subjunctive), or a ‘third series’ tense (perfect, pluperfect), find the present/future indicative (‘first series’ tenses). Thus gamovida ‘came out’ will be found under gamova or gamodis (‘will come out, comes out’), or misJdomia ‘seems to have sat down next to sb’ will be found under miuJdeba ‘will sit down next to sb’.
Secondly, change all the person markers to 3rd person singular: if you encounter gviceren ‘They write to us’, you will find this verb under ucers ‘Sb writes to sb’, similarly meubnebi ‘You tell me’ can only be looked up as eubneba ‘Sb tells sb’, or momconHar ‘I like you’ can be found under moscons (ignoring the s for alphabetical purposes), ‘Sb likes sb’.
Thirdly, in a very few cases where these steps do not lead the user to the dictionary form, then a rare, invented or even misprinted form has been used, and the following experimental steps should be tried:
a If the verb root is prefixed with a version prefix indicating a beneficiary of the action u- (mi-, gi-, gvi-), or i- or e-, omit the version prefix and look up the resulting form. (Bear in mind that the prefix i- with a transitive verb may sometimes merely indicate perfectivity, e.g. future tense, and in a few cases, such as ukbens will bite sb, u- has the same function.)
b If the verb has a prefix ga-, da-, Xa- etc look the verb up without the prefix, or substitute one prefix for another (e.g. replace da- by ga-);
c If the verb is causative (i.e. has the suffix -ebin- after the root), remove that causative infix: we have included all the attested causatives we could find, but it is possible for a Georgian writer to make a causative out of any non-causative verb.
d Consider the following options: (this approach will help with any word not found in the dictionary)
i The word is in fact a proper noun (a person, a place?), or a foreign word (Russian?) in Georgian transcription: it can only be transliterated;
ii The word is a misprint (unfortunately more frequent since the fall of Soviet totalitarianism): substitute one letter for another, interpolate a vowel in suspicious consonant clusters etc;
iii The word is an alternative, perhaps dialect form we have not recorded: substitute the initial root consonant by replacing a voiced plosive with an unvoiced (aspirate or non-aspirate), an aspirated with an unaspirated, and vice versa, q with G; or alternate -va- with -o-, or interchange the root vowel (o and u, a and e can be interchangeable) — try a different prefix;
iv If none of these measures has helped, please e-mail the editors of this dictionary: you may have spotted a word we have missed.
The history of this dictionary
The basic principles of this dictionary were first adumbrated in a paper given to the Vth Caucausological Symposium in Paris in 1988 (see Rayfield, ’The Drudgery of Words’, in Cathérine Paris (ed.) Caucasologie et mythologie comparée Paris: Peeters, 1992, pp. 485–9). Only twelve years later, the happy conjunction of developments in the internet, of generous research funding in Britain and the availability of a compatible team of compilers in London and Tbilisi made it possible to undertake such a project. Successful applications for funding were made to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (formerly Board) for England and Wales and to the Leverhulme Trust in 2001. Work began with refinement of principles and a discussion of timetable with Dr Tina Margalit’adze. The next stage was the conversion to printable form of an electronic version of the entries and grammatical information of KEGL prepared by Dr Levan Chkhaidze, and also of an electronic version of the first half of Tina Margalit’adze’s English-Georgian dictionary (A–M). A draft ‘Englishing’ of KEGL was then carried out by Professor Donald Rayfield (vols 1-4 and 8, and Dr Laurence Broers (vols 5-7). For vols 1-3, this work was backed by cards prepared by Dr Ariane Ch’ant’uria; later work proceeded without these cards, and the whole draft was extensively revised by Ariane Ch’ant’uria and Dr Shukia Apridonidze. In the meantime a database of the Georgian press compiled by Irak’li Iak’obashvili was adapted for internet searching by Levan Chkhaidze and Davit Jashi. Later this database was supplemented by a searchable bank of texts, mostly by contemporary Georgian authors. These databases were later downloaded as word lists which identified words not existing in KEGL and other sources, and indicated the relative frequency both in journalism and in literary texts. Fieldwork on colloquial Georgian was carried out by Laurence Broers in a number of visits, the longest being in autumn 2004.
A second draft, incorporating all revisions and expansions, was prepared by Donald Rayfield in 2005. This was followed by further expansion by Donald Rayfield, including Old Georgian, obsolete, dialect and colloquial material, the latter being revised by Shukia Apridonidze. Over 2,000 Jewish Georgian words with a Georgian translation were provided by Reuben Enoch. This draft was then submitted to further revision by Professors George Hewitt, Zurab K’ik’nadze, Kevin Tuite (in part only) and by Rusudan Amirejibi, as well as Shukia Apridonidze and Ariane Ch’ant’uria and the resulting fourth draft was then formatted by Donald Rayfield and, after a second complete revision by Rusudan Amirejibi, prepared for printing in 2006.
I have had an enormous amount of helpful advice and contributions from highly qualified scholars. Sometimes this has left me to make editorial choices between conflicting views. Occasionally I have misinterpreted or rejected advice and, wittingly or unwittingly, gone my own way. Since the final decisions and the physical work of compilation have rested with me, the responsibility for all mistakes, omissions and other inadequacies must be entirely mine. Constructive criticism and amendments will be gratefully received at the address: d.rayfield@qmul.ac.uk.
Donald Rayfield