kehtivä

Kehtivä is a Finnish adjective used to describe something that has reached full maturity, ripeness, or is in its prime. The term is most often found in literary, poetic, or historical contexts and is less common in everyday speech. It can refer to natural objects such as fruit, crops, or harvests that are ready for picking, as well as to a period or state regarded as flourishing.

In use, kehtivä commonly attaches to nouns that denote tangible things, for example a kehtivä sato (a ripe/prime harvest) or kehtivä hedelmä (a ripe fruit). It can also be applied metaphorically to people or eras to suggest peak condition, maturity, or optimal flowering, as in descriptions of someone in their kehtivä ikä (prime age) or a kehtivä kausi (a flourishing period). The word contributes a sense of readiness and suitability, akin to readiness for use or enjoyment.

Grammatically, kehtivä behaves as a standard Finnish adjective. It inflects to agree with the noun it describes in number and case (e.g., kehtävän, kehtivää, kehtivällä, kehtivästä, kehtivien). Its usage is versatile but remains nuanced; in contemporary everyday Finnish it tends to appear more in literary or formal styles than in casual speech.

Etymology is not clearly documented in common references, and kehtivä is generally treated as a traditional or literary form rather than a product of recent coinage. For language learners, recognizing kehtivä as an option in descriptive contexts helps convey ripeness, maturity, or prime condition beyond the everyday term kypsä.

See also: Finnish adjectives, Finnish morphology, literary Finnish.