From *mēnsā́ˀ, the plural of Proto-Balto-Slavic *mḗns, from Proto-Indo-European *mḗms. This stem has variants (*mē- > *mei-; cf. maiss) and may have originally been the name of some animal species (cf. *moysós (“sheep”), and secondarily also the source of words for its meat, skin, or limbs. Semantically, miesa became restricted to “flesh” while its synonym gaļa (q.v.) became “meat,” but its original wider meaning can still be seen in the derived term miesnieks (“butcher”).