lukkoa

Lukkoa is the partitive singular form of the Finnish noun lukko, which means a lock. In Finnish, the partitive case is used in several contexts, including after negation, with verbs that indicate an indefinite amount, or when the speaker refers to the object in a non-specific way. As such, lukkoa appears in sentences where the lock is not treated as a specific, countable item in the nominative form.

In practice, lukkoa is commonly used in negated clauses and with verbs that require the partitive. Examples include en näe lukkoa (I don’t see a lock) and tarvitsen lukkoa (I need a lock). The basic nominative form is lukko; other related forms include lukon (genitive) and lukkoja (partitive plural). The use of lukkoa as a partitive singular is a regular feature of Finnish morphology and does not alter the core meaning of the word.

Because lukko refers to a concrete, countable object, its partitive forms are frequently encountered in everyday Finnish when the speaker is not pointing to a specific lock or when talking about locking in general rather than a particular item. The word’s meaning remains the same, while its form changes to reflect grammatical function within a sentence.

See also: lukko; Finnish grammar; partitive case.