Käveli

Käveli is the third‑person singular past tense form of the Finnish verb kävellä, meaning “to walk.” In standard Finnish conjugation, the stem käve‑ combines with the past tense marker ‑li, resulting in käveli, which translates as “he/she/it walked” or “you (formal) walked.” The verb belongs to the “type I” (vowel‑stem) verb class, and its infinitive form is kävellä. The past tense is used to describe completed walking actions in narrative and descriptive contexts, and it follows the same syntactic rules as other Finnish past tense verbs, appearing before objects, adverbials, or auxiliary verbs as needed.

Etymologically, kävellä originates from the Proto‑Finnic käväleä, related to the concept of moving on foot, and shares cognates with Estonian käia (“to go, to walk”). The form käveli appears frequently in Finnish literature, newspapers, and everyday speech, often in simple past narratives: “Hän käveli kotiin” (“He/She walked home”). It can also occur in compound tenses when combined with auxiliary verbs, such as “oli käveli” (archaic for “had walked”). In spoken Finnish, the vowel length may be reduced, but the standard written form remains käveli. The word illustrates typical Finnish past tense morphology and is a basic example for learners of Finnish verb conjugation.