Tühjade

Tühjade is an Estonian adjective form meaning “empty,” used specifically as the genitive plural form of the base adjective tühi. It appears before a noun in contexts where the noun is in the genitive plural, indicating that the described objects or spaces are empty.

Morphology and etymology: The root tühi is native to Estonian. The form tühjade is created by adding the genitive plural ending -de to the stem, yielding a word that describes multiple items or spaces in a way that aligns with Estonian grammar rules for adjectives in the genitive plural.

Usage: In standard Estonian, tühjade is used when describing or specifying emptiness in relation to a plural noun in genitive form. It commonly occurs in contexts such as inventories, descriptions of spaces, or discussions about containers and objects that lack content. For example, phrases like tühjade karpide or tühjade ruumide illustrate the concept of “empty boxes” or “empty rooms,” respectively, when the noun is put in the genitive plural.

Notes: While tühjade functions as a grammatical form, the underlying adjective tühi remains the lexical item meaning “empty.” The form is primarily a hinge in sentence structure, not a separate semantic unit. Cross-linguistic equivalents exist in Finnic languages, such as Finnish tyhjä, which share a common semantic field with Estonian tühi.

See also: tühi; Estonian adjectives; Estonian grammar; Finnic languages.