karkeä

Karkeä is a Finnish adjective meaning rough, coarse, or crude. It is used to describe physical textures as well as figurative roughness in behavior, language, or methods.

In material and surface descriptions, karkeä denotes a lack of smoothness or refinement. It can describe surfaces or substances that feel or appear rough, for example karkeä pinta or karkeaa hiekkaa. It also appears in figurative expressions such as karkeaa kieltä (crude language) or karkeaa käytöstä (rough behavior).

Grammatically, karkeä follows standard Finnish adjective inflection. The positive form is karkeä, the comparative form is typically karkeampi, and the superlative form follows the usual patterns in Finnish, depending on the noun's number and case. The adverbial form is karkeasti.

Nuances: While often neutral in describing texture, karkeä commonly carries a negative or critical nuance when applied to people or discourse. It can also be used descriptively in product or material descriptions without moral judgment when referring to texture. In more gentle contexts, related forms such as karkeahko may convey a softer sense of roughness.