Etsittävät

Etsittävät is a Finnish term formed as the nominative plural of the present passive participle etsittävä, from the verb etsiä, meaning “to seek.” It translates roughly as “the ones to be sought” and functions as an adjective or as a substantive phrase describing people or objects that are being actively located.

In practice, etsittävät is most common in law enforcement, public notices, and media language. It is used to label individuals or items that authorities or others are trying to locate. For example, police bulletins and news reports may say that certain persons are etsittävät, or that a list of etsittävät henkilöt has been published. The construction signals an ongoing search rather than a completed action.

Grammatically, etsittävät typically accompanies a noun, forming phrases such as etsittävät henkilöt (the people to be sought) or etsittäviä tavaroita (items to be searched for). The word’s form changes according to case and number, so in some sentences you will encounter etsittäviä henkilöitä or other inflected variants, depending on how the phrase is used in the sentence.

Etymologically, etsittävät comes from etsi- “to seek” plus the present passive participle suffix -ttävä, which yields an adjective or noun-like phrase meaning “to be sought.” The term is neutral in tone and primarily descriptive, conveying information about a search rather than making a moral judgment.