Terällä

Terällä is the adessive singular form of the Finnish noun terä, which means blade or edge. In Finnish grammar, the adessive case is used to indicate location on something or the instrument used to perform an action. Therefore terällä can mean “on the blade” as a surface, or more commonly “with a blade” as an instrumental meaning. It is not a separate conceptual term, but a grammatical form of terä.

Usage. Terällä appears in constructions that describe using a blade to perform an action or to refer to something associated with a blade. It is frequently used with verbs of cutting, scraping, or shaping, where the blade is the instrument: for example, leikkaa terällä means “cut with a blade.” The form primarily serves instrumental or locative functions; the corresponding plural form is terillä, meaning “on blades” or “with blades.”

Etymology and related forms. The form terällä is derived from terä plus the adessive suffix -llä. Related inflected forms include terä (nominative), terän (genitive), terässä (inessive), terästä (elative), and in plural terät (nominative) with terillä being the plural adessive. The word is common in everyday Finnish, but terällä as a standalone lexical item is rarely used outside grammatical discussion, and its practical sense emerges only within a sentence.