Viehättävään

Viehättävä is a Finnish adjective meaning attractive, charming, or appealing. It is used to describe things, places, or people that give a pleasant, engaging impression. The word is commonly found in descriptive and literary language as well as everyday speech.

Viehättävään is the illative singular form of the adjective, used when the noun it describes is in the illative case (indicating movement into or toward something). For example, in the sentence Hän astui viehättävään taloon, the noun taloon is in illative case and the house is described as attractive. The adjective agrees with the noun in number and case, so other illative forms would reflect different nouns, such as viehättävään maisemaan (into an attractive landscape).

Morphologically, viehättävä inflects like other Finnish adjectives: nominative singular viehättävä, genitive singular viehättävän, partitive singular viehättävää, inessive viehättävässä, and so on. The illative form follows the same pattern, with endings varying by the noun’s case and number. In plural, nominative would be viehättävät, and illative plural would correspond to viehättäviiin or similar depending on the noun’s form.

Usage notes: viehättävä is a neutral, descriptive term appropriate for both neutral and formal registers. It often appears in writing about design, landscapes, architecture, or characters when an appealing quality is being emphasized. While subjective, it is widely understood and not overly florid.

Etymology: the adjective derives from viehätys (charm, allure) and the verb viehättää (to charm), with the common adjectival suffix -vä forming viehättävä.