eivärillisiä

Eivärillisiä is a Finnish adjective form that means colorless or lacking color. In standard Finnish, colorlessness is more commonly expressed with the adjective väritön, but eivärillisiä appears in contexts where the adjective is inflected to describe plural items in the partitive case, often in older or stylistic writing. The form is created by combining the negative particle ei with the stem värillinen and then inflecting as partitive plural, producing eivärillisiä rather than using a separate ei + värillisiä in modern prose.

Usage and occurrence

The fused form eivärillisiä is relatively rare in contemporary everyday Finnish. More typical modern usage would replace it with phrases such as värittömiä or liikennekontekstissa ei- värillisiä (colorless) when describing multiple items in the partitive. When eivärillisiä does appear, it is usually in descriptive or historical texts, or as a stylistic choice to convey a formal or archaic tone. It can describe substances, materials, or visuals that do not exhibit color, for example eivärillisiä nesteitä (colorless liquids) or eivärillisiä kankaita (colorless fabrics).

Relation to related terms

Common synonyms or near-synonyms in Finnish include väritön and värittömiä, depending on grammatical context. Discussions of color in science, art, and everyday description often prefer näennäisesti colorless terms that avoid negation, but eivärillisiä remains a valid, though uncommon, inflected form.

See also

väritön, värittömiä, väritys, väri.