puhastan

Puhastan is the first-person singular present indicative form of the Estonian verb puhastama, meaning to clean, purify, or make something clean. It functions as a simple present tense statement about an agent performing the action of cleaning or purifying. The infinitive is puhastama, and the corresponding past participle is puhastatud.

In usage, puhastan is typically followed by a direct object in the accusative case, for example: Ma puhastan tuba (I clean the room) or Ma puhastan kööki (I clean the kitchen). The form is commonly used in everyday speech and writing to describe routine or ongoing cleaning tasks. Beyond physical cleaning, puhastama can also carry senses of purifying or clarifying in a broader figurative sense, depending on context.

Etymology and morphology: puhastama is built from a root related to cleanliness, with the infinitive suffix -ma. The present-tense ending -n marks first-person singular, yielding puhastan. Estonian verbal conjugation relies on noun-like stems combined with person and number endings, rather than fixed subject pronouns, so puhastan clearly expresses “I.”

Relation to Finnish: Estonian puhastama and Finnish puhastaa share similar meanings related to cleaning or purifying, but the exact present-tense forms differ between the languages. The Estonian form puhastan corresponds to the first-person present in Estonian, while Finnish equivalents would use different conjugation patterns (for example, a Finnish form like puhistan for related verbs).

See also: Estonian verbs, Estonian infinitives, Estonian conjugation.