Mahulise

Mahulise is the genitive singular form of the Estonian adjective mahuline, meaning "of massive or substantial size." It appears in phrases where mahuline describes a noun that is in the genitive case, and it is commonly used to emphasize scale in formal, technical, and journalistic writing.

In usage, mahuline is attached to nouns to indicate large magnitude, and mahulise typically governs the genitive form of the noun it modifies. For example, mahulise projekti eelarve means "the budget of a massive project," and mahulise suurusega andmed means "data of massive size." The construction is especially common in discussions of infrastructure, economics, planning, and public administration where highlighting scale is important.

Etymology-wise, mahuline is formed from the noun maht, meaning volume or size, with a derivational suffix that yields an adjective meaning “of size/volume.” The genitive form mahulise then appears when the adjective modifies a following noun in the genitive case.

Notes on usage include that mahulise tends to appear in formal or semi-technical contexts rather than everyday conversation. It provides a precise way to convey that something is measured or perceived as very large, rather than simply “big.” While used primarily in Estonian, similar constructions exist in other Finnic languages for expressing scale in noun phrases.

See also: Estonian grammar; adjectives; genitive case; stylistic emphasis in technical language.