peitä

Peitä is a Finnish verb form, most commonly recognized as the singular imperative of the verb peittää, which means "to cover," "to hide," "to conceal," or "to coat." It is used in commands and requests ("Peitä!" — "Cover it!" or "Put a lid on it") and can apply to both literal covering (blankets, lids, paint) and figurative senses (concealing information, masking symptoms).

As a lemma, peittää is a transitive verb that takes a direct object and appears in a range of tenses and moods: infinitive peittää, present peittää/peitän (depending on person), past peitti, perfect on peittänyt, and conditional peittäisi. The imperative singular form peitä corresponds to the second-person singular command; the plural/formal imperative is peittäkää. The verb forms follow regular patterns of Finnish conjugation and are common in everyday speech.

Peitä appears in compound and derived words (for example peite, "cover" or "blanket"; peittäminen, "covering") and in idiomatic expressions. Its usage spans domestic contexts (peittää pöytä, "cover/set the table"), medical contexts (peittää haava, "cover a wound"), and metaphorical contexts (peittää totuus, "hide the truth"). The root is shared with cognates in other Finnic languages and reflects general semantic fields of covering and concealment.