A food baked from flour and water, usually with yeast or sourdough, eaten as a loaf, slice, or piece.
Examples
Brokastīs es apēdu divas maizes šķēles.
At breakfast I ate two slices of bread.
Vecmāmiņa pati cep rudzu maizi.
Grandmother bakes her own rye bread.
Uzsmērē sviestu uz maizes.
Spread butter on the bread.
Veikalā nopirkām svaigu maizes klaipu.
We bought a fresh loaf of bread at the shop.
Pie zupas pasniedza tumšo maizi.
Dark bread was served with the soup.
Similar words
Etymology
An old Baltic word related to Latvian mieži, meaning “barley”. The deeper origin has been linked to Iranian words built on a root meaning “to sow”.
FAQ
What does maize mean in Latvian?
Maize means bread, the baked food made mainly from flour and water.
How do you pronounce maize?
Maize is pronounced /ˈmai̯ze/, with stress on the first syllable.
Is maize masculine or feminine?
Maize is feminine in Latvian.
What is the genitive form of maize?
The genitive singular is maizes.
Does Latvian maize mean corn?
No. Latvian maize means bread, while corn or maize is kukurūza.
Comments & contributions
Know this word from another angle? Add a correction, a nuance, or a usage note. New posts go public after a quick review.
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Free Turtle
Aug 13
There is also pelnīt maizi, literally earning bread, meaning earning a living. So if someone says a job dod maizi, nobody is talking about free loaves.
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Eager Shrew
Aug 15
Latvian has a lot of these bread = livelihood phrases, very same feeling as хлеб in Russian
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Fond Hornbill
Aug 12
For bar food, ķiploku grauzdiņi are fried rye bread with garlic. Tourists sometimes expect garlic toast, but its harder, darker, salty, beer snack energy.
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Swift Panda
Aug 10
Rupjmaizes kārtojums is another one where the word hides inside the dish name. It is the layered dessert with rye breadcrumbs, jam and cream, so dont translate it as some kind of bread arrangement and panic.
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Wandering Condor
Aug 12
this one is so good cold from the fridge next morning
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Pearl Sparrow
Aug 7
Maizes zupa is dessert, not soup with bread beside it.
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Vivid Curlew
Aug 6
Saldskābmaize sounds like it should be cake when you first learn it, but no. It is the sweet-sour rye bread type, and caraway is not a strange modern flavouring there, it belongs to the traditional version. My Latvian friends argue about brands of it like people argue about coffee.
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Steady Meerkat
Aug 6
baltmaize = white bread. baltā maize is understandable too, but the compound is what you see/hear a lot.
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Humble Rabbit
Aug 1
Rupjmaize is the dark rye one. If you come from English and picture soft rye sandwich bread, Latvian rupjmaize is much heavier and darker, more like black bread.
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Dusty Fawn
Aug 2
Proper one with butter is basically a meal, no need to decorate it
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Cosmic Quail
Jul 30
At a cafe maizīte can just mean a sandwich. Desu maizīte, siera maizīte, that sort of thing.
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Stormy Tiger
Jul 30
and usually open sandwich, at least the ones I was given in Riga
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Steady Curlew
Jul 21
maizes is the form that got me. Sometimes it is singular genitive, like maizes šķēle, and sometimes it is normal plural, like the bakery has three different maizes today. You dont get a new ending to warn you, you just have to read the sentence around it.