kokonainen

Kokonainen is a Finnish adjective meaning "entire" or "whole" and is used to express completeness or totality of a quantity, time span, or collection. It emphasizes that something is not partial or incomplete. The form is used before a noun and agrees with it in number and case, as in kokonainen vuosi (an entire year) and kokonaiset vuodet (entire years).

Etymology and form: The word derives from koko, meaning "the whole," and uses the common adjectival suffix -ainen to form a descriptive adjective. This pattern is widespread in Finnish, producing words that denote characteristic or belonging to a quality of the root.

Usage and nuance: Kokonainen is often preferred when the speaker wants to stress completeness, rather than mere size or extent. It appears in both formal and everyday language. It can describe quantities (kokonainen summa, the total amount), time periods (kokonainen vuosi), or groups (kokoinen kokonainen joukko). In some contexts, kokonais- compounds such as kokonaisuus (the totality) or kokonaisluku (integer) are used to express related ideas.

Related terms: Kokonaisuus refers to the totality or entirety of something, while kokonaisluku denotes an integer in mathematics. The word koko is the base meaning "the whole" and is closely related but used in different syntactic contexts.

See also: koko, kokonaisuus, kokonaisluku, kokonaismäärä.

Notes: As with many Finnish adjectives, the exact form of kokonainen changes with the noun’s case and number, but it retains the same meaning of wholeness or completeness across common usages.