etäisyytenä

Etäisyytenä is a Finnish inflectional form of the noun etäisyys, meaning distance. The basic sense of etäisyys covers spatial, temporal, and abstract distances, such as the space between objects, the duration between events, or figurative distances between people or ideas. Etäisyytenä specifically signals that something is being described or considered “as a distance” or “in the capacity of a distance.”

Morphology and usage notes: Etäisyys is declined through the standard Finnish case system, and etäisyytenä represents a particular form used to express designation or role, roughly corresponding to the English phrase “as a distance.” Because it is a specialized form, etäisyytenä tends to appear in formal, technical, or literary contexts rather than in everyday speech.

Contexts and examples: The form is used when the distance is being singled out as a parameter, a metric, or a qualitative condition in a statement. It may appear in scientific writing, architectural or geographic descriptions, and literary prose where distance is central to the description or argument. In daily conversation, speakers more commonly use other cases to convey similar ideas.

Etymology and related forms: Etäisyytenä is derived from etäisyys with a suffix used to mark a particular case that denotes “as” or “in the role of.” This contrasts with the translative form etäisydeksi (as a distance) or other case forms that describe location or movement. See also etäisyys and Finnish noun inflection.

See also: etäisyys; Finnish inflection; essive/discussed case forms.