syömänsä

Syömänsä is a Finnish expression used to refer to something that has been eaten by someone. In meaning, it corresponds to the English phrase “the thing (that) he/she ate,” as in “the food he ate.” The form is a possessive construction built from the verb syödä (to eat) and a participle-like element, functioning as a modifier that attaches to a following noun.

Grammatically, syömänsä forms a pre-nominal modifier that can be placed before a noun to indicate the object of eating. The head noun is usually in the partitive case when referring to what was eaten, yielding phrases such as syömänsä leipää or syömänsä ruokaa, meaning “the bread/food that he ate.” The possessor is indicated by a third-person possessive suffix, and the phrase can be used in various tenses and clauses depending on context.

Usage notes:

- Syömänsä is most common in written or formal styles and in complex noun phrases; it offers a compact way to express “the things someone has eaten.”

- In everyday speech, speakers may opt for simpler constructions such as “se, mitä hän söi” (what he ate) or use a relative clause: “ruoka, jonka hän söi.”

See also:

- Similar constructions with other verbs, such as juomansa (drink), which follow the same possessive-participle pattern to denote “the drink he drank.”

- Finnish relativas and nominalizations that compile actions into noun phrases for conciseness.