pölyllä

Pölyllä is the adessive singular form of the Finnish noun pöly, meaning dust. In Finnish grammar, pölyllä marks a surface or state associated with dust, often translated as “on dust” or “with dust on.” It is one example of how the adessive case is used to express location or contact with a surface and its condition.

Usage of pölyllä is most common in descriptive or technical language, where a surface or object is described as bearing dust or being in a dusty state. In everyday speech, speakers more often rely on adjectives such as pölyinen (dusty) or other constructions that express dust in a more general sense. Pölyllä can appear in fixed expressions or in descriptions of environments, materials, or surfaces that carry dust, sometimes in phrases like “pölyllä peitetyt pinnat” (dust-covered surfaces), though this is less frequent in casual speech.

Formation and related forms: The form pölyllä is created by adding the adessive suffix -llä to the noun pöly. Finnish nouns have multiple case forms, including pölyn (genitive) and pölyä (partitive), among others, and pölyllä belongs to this system as the adessive. The pronunciation reflects standard Finnish phonology, with the -llä ending indicating the adessive case.

Etymology and context: Pöly is a native Finnish word meaning dust, with forms used across various grammatical cases. Pölyllä illustrates how the Finnish language encodes spatial relationships and material states through case endings, complementing adjectives and other constructions used to describe dust and dusty conditions.

See also: Finnish grammar, noun declension, cases, pöly.