elollisissa

Elollisissa is a Finnish term formed as the inessive plural of the adjective elollinen, meaning animate or living. It is used chiefly in biology, ecology, and linguistic discussions of animacy to refer to contexts involving living beings, as opposed to elottomat, which denotes inanimate things. In practice, elollisissa often appears in scientific or educational prose to evoke "in living organisms" or "among living things."

Etymology and grammar note that elollinen denotes life-bearing or living properties, and elollisissa is the inessive plural form used when describing locations or contexts within living things. Finnish adjectives decline to agree with the noun they modify, so elollinen can yield various inflected forms such as elolliset (nominative plural) or elollisissa (inessive plural) depending on how the phrase is structured. While elollisissa is most recognizable in technical writing, it can also appear in more general discourse when a distinction between life and non-life is relevant.

Usage and nuance: elollisissa is most natural in scientific sentences, for example, "Elollisissa olennoissa solut voivat jakautua" meaning “In living organisms, cells can divide.” In everyday language, speakers more commonly use phrases like “eläviä olentoja” (living organisms) or “elolliset olennoiset” in more formal or educational contexts. The term serves to highlight a semantic contrast between living and non-living phenomena, rather than to encode a strict grammatical category beyond standard Finnish adjective inflection.

See also: elollinen, elottomat, animacy, Finnish grammar.