suojavat

Suojavat is a Finnish verb form that expresses the action of protecting carried out by a plural subject in the present tense. It is the third-person plural present indicative form of the verb suojata, meaning to protect or defend against harm. In Finnish, verbs inflect for person and number, and the present plural form is created by attaching the suffix -vat or -vät to the verb stem; for suojata the standard spelling of the present plural is suojaavat.

The form appears in ordinary clauses describing ongoing protective actions by multiple subjects. For example: Linnut suojaavat poikasiaan, meaning Birds protect their offspring. Such sentences illustrate how suojata-conjugated verbs pair with plural subjects and direct objects.

Suojavat is not a lexical noun or independent entry in most dictionaries; rather, it is a grammatical inflection. The dictionary lemma for the verb is suojata, and suojaavat is one of its many inflected forms. When written at the beginning of a sentence or in certain stylistic contexts, the word may appear capitalized as Suojavat, but this does not change its grammatical role as a verb form in standard Finnish.

See also: suojata, suojaus, Finnish verb conjugation, present indicative.