pitkikäistä

Pitkikäistä is the partitive singular form of the Finnish adjective pitkäikäinen, meaning long-lived or long-lasting. The adjective is built from pitk- (long) and ikä (age or life) with the suffix -inen, and it commonly describes living beings with unusually long lifespans as well as objects or phenomena that endure for a long time.

The noun form for the abstract quality of longevity is pitkäikäisyys. Other inflected forms of the adjective include pitkäikäisen (genitive singular) and pitkäikäistä (partitive singular), the latter used when the head noun is in the partitive case.

Usage is primarily grammatical: pitkikäistä appears when the noun it modifies is in the partitive case, often in expressive or adjectival phrases such as those found in wishes or literary styles. In ordinary descriptive use, pitkäikäinen is more common (for example, pitkäikäinen eläin, long-lived animal). The term is neutral and widely understood in standard Finnish, and it is not tied to any particular dialect.

Semantic notes include the broad applicability of the concept: it can refer to biological longevity (species or individuals with long lifespans) as well as to durability or duration in non-biological contexts. The related noun pitkäikäisyys denotes the quality or property of being long-lived, and the adjective can appear in various grammatical cases to fit the sentence structure.

See also: pitkäikäinen, pitkäikäisyys, longevity in biology, durability in materials.

---