Pienintä

Pienintä is the partitive singular form of the Finnish superlative adjective pienin, meaning “the smallest.” It is used when the adjective modifies a noun in the partitive case or in fixed phrases where a partitive noun follows.

In practice, pienintä appears in contexts such as: pienintä mahdollista varotoimenpidettä (the smallest possible precaution), pienintä mahdollista viivettä (the smallest possible delay), or pienintä vaihtoehtoa (the smallest possible option). These constructions express a minimal degree or amount and commonly occur in formal or technical language.

Grammatically, pienintä is a dependent form and is not used as a bare predicate. The base adjective pienin is employed in nominative singular when describing a subject directly, while the genitive and plural forms follow the usual Finnish adjective inflection: pienimmän (genitive singular) and pienimmät (nominative plural), with corresponding partitive and other case endings for different nouns.

Etymology and form: pienintä derives from pieni + the superlative suffix -in, with the partitive singular ending -tä. This pattern mirrors how other Finnish adjectives in the superlative decline across cases and numbers, producing the partitive form for nouns that require it.

See also: pienin, Finnish adjectives, Finnish grammar, partitive case.