Pienennä

Pienennä is the Finnish verb pienentää in the imperative mood, used as a command in the second-person singular. It means “make smaller” or “reduce,” and it is used to instruct someone to decrease the size, amount, or scale of something.

Formation and etymology: Pienentää is formed from the adjective pieni (“small”) with a causative-like suffix -ent- and the infinitive ending -ä. The imperative form for one person is pienennä, created from the stem pienenn- plus -ä. The non-imperative present tense form pienentää means “he/she reduces” or “you reduce.”

Usage: The word appears in everyday Finnish and in technical contexts such as computing, printing, photography, or design. In software interfaces you might see phrases like “Pienennä kuvan kokoa” (resize the image) or “Pienennä tekstin kokoa” (reduce the text size). The negative imperative is formed with älä + infinitive, as in “älä pienennä sitä” (do not reduce it).

Related forms and antonyms: The noun form is pienentäminen (the act of reducing). The opposite verb is suurentaa (to enlarge). Pienentäminen is commonly used in discussions of image processing, document formatting, and data presentation.

Examples:

- Pienennä kuvan kokoa viidenkymmentä prosentilla.

- Voisitko pienentää tämän tekstin kokoa, jotta se mahtuu sivulle?

- Pienennä laskun kokonaisuutta, jos mahdollista.

Pienennä functions as a straightforward imperative for direct instructions to decrease size or amount, and it is widely understood in both everyday and technical Finnish.