vaikas

Vaikas is a Lithuanian masculine noun meaning "child." It refers to a human child and is grammatically masculine; for a girl child the common term is mergaitė, while the plural vaikai refers to children in general.

Declension follows the pattern of other masculine -as nouns. The nominative singular is vaikas and the nominative plural is vaikai. The genitive singular is vaiko and the genitive plural is vaikų. Other case forms exist as with standard Lithuanian noun declension.

Usage in everyday language is widespread. It is used in phrases such as mano vaikas (my child) or vaikai žaidžia (children are playing). In literature, media, and education, vaikas appears as the basic term for discussing childhood, parenting, and related topics. An example: Mano vaikas mokosi skaityti (My child is learning to read).

Etymology and origin: the word vaikas is a native Lithuanian term with no widely adopted foreign cognate used for the concept in contemporary Lithuanian.

See also: Lithuanian language; Baltic languages.