merkitsevän

Merkitsevään is the illative singular form of the Finnish adjective merkitsevä, meaning “meaningful” or “significant.” The base merkitsevä comes from the verb merkitä, “to mark” or “to indicate,” but in contemporary usage it is closer in meaning to “meaningful” or “significant” rather than merely “marking.” In practice, merkittävä is more common for everyday sense of importance, while merkitsevä is prevalent in technical or academic writing, especially when describing results, evidence, or relationships with meaningful influence.

As an inflected form, merkitsevään appears when the adjective modifies a noun in the illative case. For example, tilastollisesti merkitsevään vaikutukseen means “to a statistically significant effect.” Similarly, one can encounter tilastollisesti merkitsevä tulos (a statistically significant result) and shift to the illative when needed, e.g., tilastollisesti merkitsevän tuloksen illatiivinen muoto would be a related construction. The illative form here marks direction toward or into the thing of significance, in line with Finnish grammar for adjectives and participles.

Usage and nuance: merkitsevä is common in scientific and analytical contexts to denote practical or theoretical significance, while the everyday synonym merkittevä is less frequent. In Finnish statistics and research reporting, phrases such as tilastollisesti merkitsevä ja/tai merkitsevä vaikutus are standard. For general prose, merkittävä remains the more frequent choice when referring to significance in importance rather than meaning.

See also: merkitsevä, merkittävä, tilastollinen merkitsevyys.