Vihkimä

Vihkimä is a Finnish term that is connected to the verb vihkiä, meaning to consecrate, ordain, or marry. It is not a common headword in modern standard Finnish. The usual noun for the act is vihkiminen, while vihkimä appears mainly in older, stylistically marked, or technical contexts as a participial or attributive form meaning “consecrated” or “ordained.” The suffix -mä is a historical or literary variant used to form participial stems in older Finnish and in some ecclesiastical or formal language.

In usage, vihkimä is typically found in texts aiming to reflect older style or specialized discourse. In everyday language, speakers would more often use vihkiminen to denote the act, or leveraged adjectives such as vihitty meaning “consecrated/ordained” to describe a person or object, or phrases like vihkimisseremonia for the ceremony, depending on the context.

Etymology and form: vihkimä derives from vihkiä with the -mä nominalizing/participial suffix, representing a historical or poetic adaptation of Finnish participial morphology. Because of its rarity in contemporary usage, vihkimä is largely of interest to philologists, historians, or theologians studying older texts or formal registers.

Overall, vihkimä is a rarely used, historically rooted form related to the broader category of consecration and ordination expressions in Finnish.