puutteellisia

Puutteellisia is the plural partitive form of the Finnish adjective puutteellinen, meaning deficient or incomplete. It is used to describe things that lack necessary elements or sufficiency.

Etymology and grammar: Puutteellisia comes from puute, meaning deficiency, with the suffix -ellinen to form an adjective. In Finnish, adjectives agree with the noun they modify in number and case; puutteellisia is the plural partitive form used with plural nouns in the partitive case (for example puutteellisia tietoja).

Usage: The term is common in formal, academic, or technical writing to characterize data, reports, models, methods, samples, or arguments as not fully adequate. It can carry a critical nuance, indicating that present information is incomplete or insufficient for a given purpose. It is generally not used to describe people, unless used metaphorically or cautiously in critical discourse.

Examples:

- Raportin puutteellisia tietoja ei voi käyttää päätöksentekoon. (The report’s incomplete data cannot be used for decision-making.)

- Tutkimuksessa havaittiin useita puutteellisia mittauksia. (The study found several deficient measurements.)

- Puutteellisia malleja ei tulisi soveltaa ennusteisiin. (Incomplete models should not be applied to forecasts.)

Notes: Puutteellinen and its inflections offer a range of nuance from simply missing information to broader insufficiency. The term should be chosen with attention to tone, especially when referring to people or organizations.