puolustajan

Puolustajan is the genitive singular form of the Finnish noun puolustaja, which means defender, advocate, or protector. The genitive singular puolustajan is used to indicate possession or close association, as in puolustajan tehtävä (the defender’s task) or oikeudessa puolustajan väite (the defense attorney’s claim). The word is formed from the verb puolustaa, “to defend,” with the agent-noun suffix -aja.

In everyday language, puolustaja appears in several contexts. In sports such as football and ice hockey, a puolustaja is a player whose primary responsibility is to prevent the opponent from scoring, by marking attackers, intercepting passes, and clearing the ball or puck. In legal and political contexts, puolustaja refers to the defense counsel or advocate who represents a client or defendant in court. The term can also be used more generally for someone who defends a person, idea, or right.

Grammatical note: Finnish nouns decline according to case and number. The nominative singular is puolustaja; the genitive singular is puolustajan; the partitive singular is puolustajaa; the nominative plural is puolustajat; the genitive plural is puolustajien. The word illustrates the common pattern of agent-noun formation with -aja from the verb stem.