Kehrätä

Kehrätä is a Finnish verb describing the act of clearing the throat by coughing or expelling mucus. The term is not part of everyday modern standard Finnish and is largely found in older texts and in some regional dialects. In standard usage, speakers more commonly use verbs such as köhätä to denote coughing.

The etymology of kehrätä is not well documented in mainstream dictionaries, but it appears to belong to a group of Finnish bodily-action verbs that encode a perceptible physical gesture or sound. Its appearance is more common in historical writings and regional speech, where authors aimed to convey a strong, vivid action.

In contemporary Finnish, kehrätä is typically treated as archaic or dialectal. It is rarely necessary in formal writing and may be encountered in literature or oral storytelling to evoke a rustic or traditional flavor. When present, the word can carry a regional nuance and signals a specific, physically explicit act of clearing the throat.

See also: köhätä, yskiä, Finnish dialects, Finnish phonology.