kävivät

Kävivät is the third-person plural past tense form of the Finnish verb käydä, meaning to go, visit, or attend, depending on context. It is used when the subject performing the action is plural.

The verb käydä has several related senses. In everyday language it often means going to a place or visiting someone, and it can also convey attending an event or participating in an activity. Because of its broad meaning, kävivät can describe past visits, trips, or calls by multiple people, as well as several simultaneous or repeated actions in the past.

Common usages include visiting places (käydä jossain), attending events (käydä kokouksessa, käydä konsertissa), and paying calls or dropping by (käydä luona). In narratives, kävivät situates actions in the past with plural subjects, contrasting with yksikkömuotojen (singular forms) such as kävi.

Examples:

- He kävivät museossa viime kesänä. (They visited the museum last summer.)

- Opiskelijat kävivät luennolla aamulla. (The students attended the lecture in the morning.)

- Kaverit kävivät kahvilla ennen elokuvaa. (Friends went to coffee before the movie.)

Notes:

Käydä is a versatile verb with additional meanings, including to occur or to take place in certain constructions, and it pairs with various postpositional cases to express location and manner. The form kävivät is specifically the past tense for a plural subject, while other forms (kävi, kävitt, käymme, etc.) adapt to different subjects and tenses.