dienas

Dienas is the Latvian word for a day. The plural form dienas is used when referring to several days, as in calendar counting or describing durations. In everyday language it can also indicate the daytime portion of a 24‑hour cycle, though the primary sense in such contexts often relies on phrases that specify daylight or the calendar day.

In Latvian, dienas appears in phrases such as "divas dienas" (two days) or "pēc dienām" (after a few days). The concept is central to timekeeping, scheduling, and the calendar, with dienas used to mark individual days on a month or to describe spans of time between events. The term is commonly paired with modifiers to indicate specific days, durations, or date-related information.

The length of a day, or dienas garums, varies with the season and latitude. In Latvia, day length is notably longer in summer and shorter in winter due to the tilt of the Earth. The civil day is understood in relation to the 24-hour cycle, which underpins time zones and everyday scheduling. Latvia uses Eastern European Time (UTC+2) in standard time and observes daylight saving time, advancing clocks by one hour during part of the year.

Linguistically, dienas functions as a plural noun and is frequently used in idiomatic expressions, calendar contexts, and narrative descriptions of events. It forms a core element of how speakers refer to temporal sequences, durations, and the progression of time across days.