samanaikainen

Samanaikainen is a Finnish adjective meaning concurrent or simultaneous, used to describe two or more events, processes, or states that occur at the same time. It appears in everyday language as well as technical discourse to indicate overlapping timing or co-occurrence.

Etymology and related terms: The word is formed from sama (same) and aika (time) with the adjectival suffix -inen. Related terms include samanaikaisuus (concurrency, simultaneity) and samanaikaisesti (adverb: simultaneously).

Usage and domains: In ordinary Finnish, samanaikainen describes things happening at the same moment, such as samanaikaiset tapahtumat or two tasks running samanaikaisesti. In mathematics and physics, it is used to discuss simultaneous events or solutions. In computer science, samanaikaisuus denotes concurrency, where multiple tasks progress in overlapping time periods; it is often distinguished from parallelism, which implies true simultaneous execution on multiple processors. The term also appears in linguistics, philosophy, and other fields to discuss relations of simultaneity between events or meanings.

See also: samanaikaisuus, samanaikaisesti, samanaikainen ohjelmointi, samanaikaiset tapahtumat.

Notes on usage: Like many Finnish adjectives, samanaikainen agrees with the noun in case and number, and forms such as samanaikaisen, samanaikaisia, or samanaikaisiin are used depending on syntactic context.