päitä

Päitä is the plural partitive form of the Finnish noun pää, meaning head. The base form is pää; its nominative plural is päät, the genitive plural päiden, the partitive singular päätä, and the partitive plural päitä. The form päitä is used specifically in the partitive case to refer to an indefinite or not fully specified quantity of heads.

In usage, päitä appears most often in contexts where the reference is non-specific or part of a larger statement that requires the partitive. This includes anatomical references to multiple heads in a non-countable sense, as well as situations that involve counting people as individual heads in a headcount. Figurative uses are also possible, where päitä stands for people or individuals in a crowd, group, or workforce rather than for literal heads.

Etymologically, pää stems from the Finnic root for “head” and has cognates across related languages. The form päitä reflects Finnish pluralization rules for the partitive case and is commonly encountered in written and formal Finnish, as well as in certain journalistic, scholarly, or literary contexts where a non-specific quantity of heads or people is being described.

See also: Pää (Finnish), Finnish grammar, partitive case.