hommikuse

Hommikuse is the genitive singular form of the Estonian adjective hommikune, which means morning or relating to the morning. It is used when the noun it modifies is in the genitive case, following standard Estonian agreement rules for adjectives.

In Estonian, adjectives decline to match the noun in case, number, and definiteness. The base form hommikune changes to hommikuse in the genitive singular. Other inflected forms include nominative singular hommikune, partitive singular hommikust, and corresponding plural forms such as hommikused (nominative plural) and hommikuste (genitive plural). These patterns apply across adjectives with the same root and derivational suffix.

Hommikuse functions primarily to express attribution or relation to morning within phrases where the associated noun is in genitive. Common usage includes time expressions and descriptive phrases, for example: “Hommikuse ajal linn on vaikne” (During the morning, the city is quiet) and “hommikuse valguse pehmus” (the softness of the morning light). The form also appears in more complex phrases like “hommikuse päeva valgus” (the light of the morning day) when the noun is in genitive.

Etymology-wise, hommikune is built from the noun hommik (morning) plus the adjectival suffix -ne, a productive pattern in Estonian for forming adjectives that indicate characteristic or relation. The genitive form hommikuse is a regular inflection example used to align with the noun’s case in a sentence.

See also: Estonian adjective morphology, Estonian genitive case, morning-related vocabulary in Estonian.