epäilivät

Epäilivät is a Finnish verb form meaning “they doubted” or “they suspected.” It is the imperfect (past) indicative form of the verb epäillä, which means to doubt or to suspect. In Finnish, the imperfect tense is used to describe actions or states that occurred in the past. The form epäilivät is built from the stem epäil- with the third-person plural past ending -ivät.

Usage and meaning

Epäillä covers doubting a statement, a claim, a person’s honesty, or the credibility of a situation. It can describe skepticism about information, intentions, or the likelihood of something being true. The verb commonly occurs in narrative and reported speech to convey uncertainty or disbelief.

Examples

- He epäilivät hänen tarinansa totuutta. (They doubted the truth of his story.)

- Tutkijat epäilivät ilmiön aktiivisuutta alun perin. (Researchers doubted the activity of the phenomenon at first.)

Related forms

- Epäilen (I doubt), epäilit (you doubted), epäilee (he/she doubts) – present and finite forms.

- Epäilys (doubt, suspicion) and epäilevä (skeptical) are related nouns and adjectives.

- Epäilijä means a skeptic or someone who doubts.

Notes

Epäilivät is used when referring to multiple subjects in the past who shared a doubt or suspicion. As a finite verb, it agrees with the subject in person and number and appears in contexts ranging from everyday speech to literary narration.