metsästön

Metsästän is the first-person singular present tense form of the Finnish verb metsästää, meaning to hunt. The form is used when the speaker is describing their own hunting activity in the present. Metsästää is a transitive verb, and in typical use the direct object is in the partitive case (for example peuroja, meaning deer). The infinitive form is metsätä, and related nouns include metsästys (hunting) and metsätstäjä or metsänmetsästäjä (hunter).

Etymology and related terms: The verb is linked to the forest-focused imagery of traditional Finnish life, with the root idea of pursuing game in natural habitats. Related words reflect different aspects of the activity: metsästys refers to the practice or act of hunting, and metsänmetsästäjä or metsänmetsästäjä (more commonly metsätstäjä is written as metsähan) describes a hunter. The language also uses species-specific terms for the game commonly hunted, such as peura (deer) or jänis (hare).

Usage and nuance: Metsästän is most commonly encountered in spoken Finnish and informal writing. It conveys a straightforward statement about current hunting activity by the speaker. In narrative or descriptive contexts, speakers may switch to other tenses to describe past hunts (for example, metsästin for “I hunted”) or use the passive forms to discuss hunting in general. The form reflects Finnish’s subject-verb agreement and its use of the partitive case for indefinite quantities of game.

See also: Metsästys, metsäläis, metsänmetsästäjä, peura, jänis.