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Definition 2024

See also: Tetis and Tétis

tētis m (2nd declension)

father, dad (with more emotional attachment)
mamma un tēti! vēstule būs pavisam īsa — mum and dad! (this) letter will be very short

un tad es katru dienu būšu pie tevis, tēt!‎ ― and then every day I'll be with you, dad!

tagad rakstniecei 71 gads, tēvs miris, kad viņai bija trīspadsmit gadi, bet viņa mums stāsta par savu tēti, it kā tas vakar būtu aizgājis‎ ― the writer is now 71, (her) father died when she was 30, but she told us about her dad as if he had gone yesterday
(colloquial) older man, old man
sirms tētis‎ ― a gray-haired old man

Declension of tētis (2nd declension)

	singular (vienskaitlis)	plural (daudzskaitlis)
nominative (nominatīvs)	tētis	tēti
accusative (akuzatīvs)	tēti	tētus
genitive (ģenitīvs)	tēta	tētu
dative (datīvs)	tētim	tētiem
instrumental (instrumentālis)	tēti	tētiem
locative (lokatīvs)	tētī	tētos
vocative (vokatīvs)	tēti	tēti

The term tētis has more emotional overtones than its more neutral synonym tēvs.

↑ Karulis, Konstantīns (1992), “tētis”, in Latviešu Etimoloģijas Vārdnīca (in Latvian), Rīga: AVOTS, ISBN 9984-700-12-7

From Proto-Baltic *tet- (with expressive lengthening: e → ē), from Proto-Indo-European *teta, *tata, probably formed (via child language) by reduplication from Proto-Indo-European *átta ‎(“father, mother”). Cognates include Lithuanian tė̃tis ‎(“dad”), tetà ‎(“aunt”), Old Prussian thetis ‎(“grandfather”), Russian dialectal та́та ‎(táta), Polish tata, Czech teta, Gothic 𐌰𐍄𐍄𐌰 ‎(atta), Sanskrit ततः ‎(tataḥ), Ancient Greek τέττα ‎(tétta), τατᾶ ‎(tatâ) (vocative), Latin tata (child language).^[1]