Häviöillä

Häviöillä is the adessive plural form of the Finnish noun häviö, which means "loss" or "defeat." As an adessive plural (formed with the suffix -illa/-illä), häviöillä typically conveys notions of location ("on the losses"), accompaniment or possession ("with the losses"), or means/instrument ("by losses") depending on context. Vowel harmony determines the choice of the -illä ending because häviö contains front vowels.

Grammatical and semantic functions of häviöillä include:

- Locative sense: indicating a situation or state related to losses (e.g., in descriptions of a team's season).

- Instrumental/causal sense: describing something that occurs by means of or as a result of losses.

- Possessive-like constructions: used with verbs that in Finnish require the adessive to express having or being accompanied by something.

Häviöillä appears in discourse about sports, finance, politics, and military history where multiple losses or defeats are discussed. It contrasts with other case forms of the same lexeme, such as the nominative häviö (singular), häviöt (plural), and the partitive häviöitä. The verb family hävitä (to lose) and related nouns like tappio (loss, setback) are semantically connected.

As a grammatically marked form rather than a lexical headword, häviöillä is primarily of interest in studies of Finnish morphology, syntax, and usage in contemporary Finnish texts.