Suutensa

Suutensa is a Finnish grammatical form that centers on the noun suu, meaning mouth. It is formed by attaching the third-person possessive suffix -nsä to the noun, yielding a phrase that conveys ownership by a third person. In practice, the most common everyday form to express “one’s mouth” or “his/her mouth” is suunsa, which results from suu + -nsä and is used as the possessed noun within a larger sentence.

The form suutensa itself is much less common in ordinary speech and appears primarily in more emphatic, literary, or older-text contexts. It can be understood as a fuller, more explicit possessive construction where the possessive relationship is further foregrounded or stressed within a larger phrase. In standard contemporary Finnish, suutensa is typically avoided in favor of suunsa, except in specific stylistic registers or fixed expressions.

Usage and examples

- The standard, everyday expression for “he kept his mouth shut” is Hän piti suunsa kiinni, using suunsa as the possessive form of suu.

- Suutensa may appear in particular literary constructions or dialectal styles where speakers seek extra emphasis on possession, though it is not the norm in casual speech.

Notes

- Finnish nouns form possessive expressions by adding suffixes such as -nsä to the noun stem; suunsa illustrates this rule with a body-part noun.

- While suutensa exists as a real morphological form, it is not the typical choice in everyday Finnish and is best understood as a stylistic or historical variant of the standard suunsa construction.

See also

- Finnish language

- Possessive suffixes in Finnish

- Suu (mouth)