mõistis

Mõistis is the past tense, third-person singular form of the Estonian verb mõistma, meaning to understand. It is used to describe that a subject understood something in the past. As a finite verb form, mõistis agrees with the subject in person and number and appears in the standard past tense conjugation of mõistma.

In Estonian, the past tense forms of mõistma include mõistsin, mõistsid, mõistis, mõistsime, mõistsite, and mõistsid. The form mõistsid can be ambiguous in isolation, as it can correspond to either you understood (singular) or they understood (plural). Context usually clarifies the subject. The form mõistis specifically marks the third-person singular, as in Ta mõistis kohe, mis juhtus (He/she understood immediately what happened). Other examples include Ta mõistis olukorra valesti (He understood the situation incorrectly) and Me mõistsime varem, et olukord oli keeruline (We understood earlier that the situation was complex).

Related forms include mõistma (the infinitive, “to understand”) and mõistmine (the noun “understanding” or “comprehension”). The word is commonly used in everyday Estonian, literature, and reporting to convey that comprehension occurred in the past. Like other Finnish-Estonian verbs, jõuavad nuance and tense are indicated primarily through the verb ending rather than fixed auxiliary verbs.