Lõika

Lõika is the imperative form of the Estonian verb lõikama, meaning "to cut." It is used to issue a direct command, as in everyday speech, recipes, and instructional contexts. The form lõikama gives rise to related words such as lõik (a cut or incision) and lõikamine (cutting).

In practical use, lõika appears across several domains. In cooking, one might say “Lõika porgandit” to instruct someone to cut a carrot. In crafts and woodworking, it can direct a person to cut material to a specified size. In software and user interfaces, “Lõika” is commonly used as the label for the Cut command, just as “Kopeeri” (Copy) and “Kleebi” (Paste) appear in Estonian-language menus.

Orthography and pronunciation are typical of Estonian: lõika contains the letter õ, a distinct sound in Estonian phonology. As an imperative, its form matches the second-person singular subject understood from context, without an explicit subject pronoun.

Etymology traces lõika to the verb lõikama, with related lexical items such as lõik (the act or result of cutting) and lõikamine (the process of cutting). It is primarily a standard grammatical form rather than a proper noun or place name, and it appears in usage notes, dictionaries, and language references as the command form meaning “cut.”