Kiehuvat

Kiehuvat is the present tense, third-person plural form of the Finnish verb kiehua, meaning to boil. It is used with plural subjects to describe liquids or surfaces that have reached a boiling state, as in vedet kiehuvat, “the waters are boiling.” The form can also function as an attributive adjective in front of a plural noun, yielding expressions such as kiehuvat vedet, “boiling waters,” or kiehuvat kuplat, “boiling bubbles.”

Morphologically, the suffix -vat marks the third-person plural present tense. The corresponding singular form is kiehuva, as in kattila kiehuva or kattilat kiehuvat in construction. The base stem is kieh-, and the form aligns with Finnish subject-verb agreement rules. In addition to its finite verb use, kiehuvat can appear in compound or descriptive noun phrases to convey a persistent boiling state.

In usage, kiehuvat commonly appears in cooking, science, journalism, and instructional contexts to convey heat-induced boiling. The expression may emphasize ongoing activity (the liquid is actively boiling) or describe a characteristic state (the liquids that are boiling).

Examples include: Vedet kiehuvat. Kattilat kiehuvat koko ajan. Kiehuvat kuplat nousevat kattilasta. These sentences illustrate both the predicate use with a plural subject and the attributive use before a plural noun.

Etymology: kiehua is a native Finnish verb, and kiehuvat is the inflected form formed by adding the present-tense plural suffix -vat to the stem kieh-. The term is standard in everyday Finnish and appears in dictionaries and language guidance.