Kierteisellä

Kierteisellä is Finnish an adjective form, specifically the adessive singular of the word kierteinen, meaning winding, serpentine, or twisted. It is used to describe something that has twists, turns, or coils, and it is placed before a noun to indicate location or position, as in kierteisellä tiellä “on the winding road.” The base noun is kierre, meaning twist or coil, and the -inen suffix forms an adjective that agrees with the noun in number and case.

The expression kierteisellä tiellä or kierteisellä köydellä illustrates typical usage, where the adjective describes the object’s shape or arrangement. Like other -inen adjectives in Finnish, kierteinen is declined to match the noun’s case, number, and definiteness. The genitive form would be kierteisen tien (of the winding road), and the plural forms follow standard Finnish adjective agreement patterns.

Usage and nuance: kierteinen emphasizes a curling, coil-like quality and is common in descriptive writing, geography, engineering, and sometimes literature. It can be preferred over synonyms such as mutkainen (curvy) or kiemurainen (winding) when the sense of twisting or spiraling is central. However, in everyday speech, mutkainen or kiemurainen may be more frequently used depending on the context.

See also: mutkainen, kiemurainen, mutkikas.