Hymyilyttää

Hymyilyttää is a Finnish verb meaning to be a source of a smile or to make someone smile. It conveys mild amusement or warmth rather than strong laughter. The construction is often impersonal: the thing that causes the smile is the subject, and the speaker's experience is expressed with the pronoun in the accusative, for example minua hymyilyttää (that makes me smile). The past tense is formed regularly as hymyilytti, for example se hymyilytti minut eilen (it made me smile yesterday).

The verb is derived from the noun hymy (smile) with the -yttää suffix, which forms causative verbs meaning “to cause to …” The related noun forms include hymy (smile) and hymyily (the act or feeling of smiling).

Usage notes: hymyilyttää denotes gentle, pleasant amusement and is closer to “smile-inducing” than to “laughing.” In translations, it is often rendered as “to make (one) smile” or “to be smile-inducing.” For stronger amusement, Finnish typically uses naurattaa (to make one laugh). In formal language, one can say se sai minut hymyilemään instead of relying on hymyilyttää.