pelottavan

Pelottavan is the genitive singular form of the Finnish adjective pelottava, which means scary or frightening. In Finnish, adjectives decline to agree with the noun they modify, and pelottavan is used when pelottava appears together with another adjective before a noun, or in certain descriptive constructions.

One common use is in two-adjective noun phrases, where the first adjective takes the genitive singular: pelottavan suuri talo (a frighteningly large house). In this pattern, pelottavan accompanies the second adjective to form a compound description, while the noun remains in its usual case. Pelottavan can also appear in phrases that describe appearance, as in pelottavan näköinen olento (a frightening-looking creature), where pelottavan again marks the preceding descriptive element.

Morphology and related forms follow the standard Finnish adjective declension. The base form is pelottava; its inflected forms include pelottavan (genitive singular), pelottavaa (partitive singular), pelottavan (illative/truncated forms in compounds), and plural forms corresponding to other cases and numbers. The genitive singular pelottavan is specifically used when the adjective is linked to another modifier or when the syntactic arrangement requires a genitive-marked descriptor.

Etymology traces pelottava to the verb pelottaa, meaning “to scare,” which in turn derives from pelko, “fear.” Pelottavan, as a grammatical form, represents a normal inflection pattern for adjectives in front of additional descriptors before a noun. Pelottava and pelottavat are related forms used for different grammatical contexts.

See also: pelottava, pelottavasti, Finnish adjective declension.