leikkisiä

Leikkisiä is a Finnish adjective form meaning playful or jocular when used to describe people, animals, or things. It is a inflected form derived from the concept of play (“leikki”) and the common adjective suffix -inen, which yields meanings like “playful” or “frivolous.”

In Finnish, adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number and case. Leikkisiä is the plural partitive form of the adjective, and it typically accompanies plural nouns in the partitive case. For example, leikkisiä lapsia would translate roughly to “playful children” in a context that uses the partitive. The form can also appear in phrases such as leikkisiä kommentteja or leikkisiä tarinoita, where the nouns are in the partitive and convey a sense of lighthearted or playful tone.

Usage and nuance: leikkisiä is used to describe behavior, remarks, or atmospheres that are lighthearted, joking, or not meant to be taken too seriously. It may carry a slightly more whimsical or literary nuance than synonyms like leikkisä or leikillinen, which also convey playfulness but with different stylistic connotations. The choice among these adjectives depends on the speaker’s tone and the syntactic context.

Related terms: leikkisä, leikillinen, leikki. These words share the same semantic root related to play and are used in different grammatical forms to match number and case of the nouns they modify.

See also: Finnish adjective inflection, leikki, leikkisä, leikillinen.