riikidest

Riikidest is the elative plural form of the Estonian noun riik, meaning "country" or "state". Grammatically, it combines the noun stem riik- with the plural elative ending -idest and is used to indicate movement away from, origin, separation or source when the referent is plural. A literal translation into English is "from the countries" or "out of the countries".

Usage examples in Estonian include sentences like Tema sõbrad tulid riikidest üle maailma ("His friends came from countries around the world") and Kaup saadeti riikidest väljapoole ("The goods were shipped out from the countries"). The form contrasts with riikides (inessive plural, "in the countries") and riikidesse (illative plural, "into the countries"), illustrating a common pattern in Estonian locative cases.

Etymologically, riik is a native Estonian word denoting polity or realm, and its declension follows regular Finnic case morphology. The elative plural -idest is a productive suffix used with many nouns to express "from among" plural entities. Comparable elative plural constructions occur in other Finnic languages, where similar case functions mark origin or separation.

In everyday language, riikidest appears in news reporting, academic writing and informal speech when discussing movements, origins, statistics or relationships involving multiple countries.