käik

Kõik is an Estonian word meaning all, everyone, or everything. It functions as a determiner or a pronoun and is used to refer to the totality of a set of entities without naming them individually. In standard sentences it can modify a noun, as in kõik inimesed, meaning all people, or serve as the subject, as in Kõik tulid, everyone came.

As a word that participates in Estonian grammar, kõik inflects like other pronouns and quantifiers and takes different forms according to case and number. Common examples include forms used with genitive or partitive phrases, such as kõigi inimeste arv (the number of all people) or kõiki inimesi (all people, in the partitive). The exact endings depend on the syntactic role and the case required by the sentence.

Semantically, kõik is a broad, inclusive term. It does not specify which members are included, but rather asserts that the entire group is being referred to. In discourse, it can be used for emphasis or to denote comprehensiveness, and it frequently appears in everyday speech, journalism, and literature.

Etymologically, kõik belongs to the Finnic language family. It is cognate with Finnish kaikki, which carries a similar meaning, and related forms exist in other Finnic languages. The resemblance across languages reflects shared roots in the Proto-Finnic lexicon for expressing totality.

See also: Finnish kaikki; Estonian pronouns and determiners.