raapuivat

Raapuivat is a Finnish verb form that represents the past tense in the third-person plural of the verb raapua, meaning to scratch or scrape. As a past, active-voice form, raapuivat describes actions carried out by multiple subjects scratching or scraping something.

In standard usage, raapuivat describes physical scratching of tangible surfaces, such as furniture, wood, or skin from itching. It is commonly found in narrative descriptions of events where several subjects perform scratching actions. For example: Kissat raapuivat sohvan verhoilua, ja omistaja huomasi naarmut. This translates to "The cats scratched the sofa upholstery, and the owner noticed the scratches."

Grammatically, raapuivat is formed from the infinitive raapua with the past tense ending for third-person plural. It contrasts with raapuvat, which is the present-tense form used for ongoing scratching by they. The verb belongs to the class of Finnish -ua verbs and shares its basic theme with other verbs that indicate sensory or manual actions performed by multiple entities.

Overall, raapuivat is a standard, neutral past-tense form used in Finnish to report that several subjects scratched or scraped something in the past.