löyhän

Löyhään is the illative singular form of the Finnish adjective löyhä, which means loose or slack. In Finnish grammar, the illative case expresses movement into something, so löyhään is used before a noun in illative form to convey “into the loose X.”

In practice, löyhään appears in phrases such as löyhään kankaaseen, meaning “into the loose fabric,” or löyhään sidokseen, meaning “into the loose bandage,” where the adjective agrees with the noun in number and case. The form is part of the wider inflection pattern of Finnish adjectives, which mirror the noun they modify.

Löyhä describes something that is not tight, tight-fitting, or compact, and it can refer to physical properties like fabrics, clothing, or materials. It can also be used metaphorically to describe non-strict or lax conditions, though in everyday Finnish more common synonyms such as löysä may be preferred in some contexts.

Etymology-wise, löyhä is a native Finnish word with long-standing usage in descriptive language. Its exact historical roots are part of the broader Finnic linguistic heritage, and löyhään represents one of its inflected forms rather than a separate lexical entry.

See also: löyhä, löysä. While löyhä and löysä share related meanings, they carry slightly different stylistic or nuance loads and are used in different contexts depending on formality and emphasis.