mängis

Mängis is the third-person singular past tense form of the Estonian verb mängima, meaning to play. It is used to describe a completed action in the past by a single subject (he, she, or it) and appears in both written and spoken Estonian. The verb mängima belongs to the regular -ima verb class, and ta mängis is the standard past-tense form for “he/she/it played.” Estonian expresses tense and person through verb endings, and gender is not distinguished in finite verb forms.

Usage notes: Mängis is commonly used in narrative past tense. It often appears with time expressions such as eile (yesterday), hiljuti (recently), or varem (before). In everyday speech, the subject pronoun ta is frequently omitted when the verb form makes the subject clear.

Examples:

- Ta mängis jalgpalli eile. Translation: He played football yesterday.

- Ta mängis klaverit pärast kooli. Translation: She played the piano after school.

Related forms include mängib (present tense), mängida (infinitive), and mängimine (gerund or nominalization). The word mängis is linked semantically to mäng, meaning game, reflecting the relationship between the act of playing and games in Estonian vocabulary.