silmiä

Silmiä is the partitive plural form of the Finnish noun silmä, meaning "eye." In Finnish, nouns are inflected for number and case, and silmiä marks a plural object in a partitive sense — used when the quantity is indefinite or not treated as a complete, counted set, or when the verb requires a partitive object.

The base noun silmä has several common forms: nominative singular silmä, partitive singular silmää, genitive singular silmän, nominative plural silmät, genitive plural silmien, and partitive plural silmiä. The partitive plural silmiä thus corresponds to English "eyes" when described in a non-finite, partial, or non-definitive sense.

Usage of silmiä occurs in constructions where the eye objects are not being counted or are described in a non-definite way, or in sentences governed by verbs that take a partitive object. Finnish does not use articles, and the choice of partitive versus other forms reflects aspects such as negation, ongoing states, or quantities that are not fully specified.

Etymology traces silmä to the Finnic root common to related languages; it is cognate with Estonian silm and similar forms in other Finnic languages, reflecting a shared lineage for the word "eye" across the language family.

In summary, silmiä is the standard partitive plural form of silmä, used for multiple eyes in contexts that require a non-definite or non-counted reference.