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FINNISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

syli.

arms (in reference to embracing or holding in both one's arms)

4 characters2 syllables approx.Suomi language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsyli/[ˈs̠yli]
  1. arms (in reference to embracing or holding in both one's arms)

    Otin hänet syliini.
  2. lap (space over upper legs of a seated person)

    Poika istui äitinsä sylissä.
  3. lap (place of rearing and fostering)

    figuratively
  4. synonym of sylillinen (“armful”)

Where this word comes from

From Proto-Finnic *süli, from Proto-Uralic *süle. Cognates include Estonian süli, Veps sülʹ, Erzya сэль (sëľ, “fathom”), Hungarian öl.

noun/ˈsyli/[ˈs̠yli]
  1. fathom (traditional measure of length equal to three cubits; see usage notes below)

  2. fathom

  3. A unit of volume for firewood, enough firewood to make a woodpile four kyynärä (around 2.4 metres) long and three kyynärä (around 1.8 metres) tall, with the width depending on the type of tree; e.g. five kortteli (around 0.75 metres) wide (equating to around 3.14 stacked cubic metres) for birch and six kortteli (around 0.9 metres) wide (equating to around 3.77 stacked cubic metres) for wood from coniferous trees.

    historical
  4. A somewhat less old unit of volume for firewood equivalent to four (stacked) cubic metres.

    historical
Where this word comes from

From etymology 1 by semantic loan from Swedish famn (“lap, measure of length”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.