Epäiltävän

Epäiltävän is a grammatical form related to Finnish words that express doubt or skepticism. In standard Finnish, the common adjective meaning “doubtful” or “skeptical” is epäilevä. The form epäiltävän would technically be a genitive singular of a participle/adjective stem that is not widely used in contemporary Finnish dictionaries. For this reason, epäiltävän is not a canonical dictionary headword, and its exact status can vary between dialects and historical texts.

In practice, writers who want to describe a person or thing as doubting or suspicious typically use the base form epäilevä (as a nominative adjective) or the standard genitive form epäilevän when modifying a noun in possessive constructions. For example, standard Finnish would prefer phrases such as epäilevän henkilön lausunto or epäilevän ilmeen kuvaus to express “the skeptical person’s statement” or “the doubtful expression.” If a text uses epäiltävän, it is usually as a nonstandard, dialectal, or archaic variant and may appear in older corpora or in regional speech patterns.

Etymology links this family to the prefix epä- meaning “not” or “un-” combined with a root from doubt-related verbs, yielding terms that describe doubt, suspicion, or skepticism. Related words include epäily (doubt), epäilijä (skeptic), and epäilevä (doubting). In modern Finnish writing, the preferred forms are epäilevä and epäily, with epäiltävän appearing chiefly as a nonstandard or context-specific form rather than as a distinct, widely recognized entry.