Häpeän

häpeän is the first-person singular present indicative form of the Finnish verb hävetä, meaning to feel shame or to be ashamed. In standard usage, häpeän expresses the speaker’s own emotional state, i.e., “I am ashamed,” rather than an action directed at someone else. The form can, in some contexts, appear with a transitive meaning (to shame someone), but the intransitive sense “to feel ashamed” is by far the most common.

Etymology and morphology: The verb hävetä is built on the noun häpeä (shame) and uses the regular Finnish verb endings. The present tense first-person form attaches the suffix -n to the stem häve- (yielding häpe- in practice), giving häpeän. This pattern is part of standard Finnish verb conjugation for many two-vowel stems ending in -e.

Usage notes: Häpeän is typically used with a complement describing what one is ashamed of, often in the partitive or genitive forms. Examples include:

- Minä häpeän tätä tilannetta. (I am ashamed of this situation.)

- Hän häpeää tekonsa. (He is ashamed of his deed.)

The word is common in everyday speech and in writing when expressing personal moral or social embarrassment.

Related terms: The noun häpeä means “shame.” Related adjectives include häpeällinen (shameful) and verbs such as hävetä (to be ashamed) and, in a related sense, häpäistä (to shame, to desecrate), though the transitive use is less frequent in everyday Finnish.

See also: häpeä (noun), hävetä (verb).