tekemää

Tekemää is a Finnish grammatical form derived from the verb tehdä, meaning “to do” or “to make.” It is the singular partitive form of the past active participle tekemiä/tekemä, used when the participle functions as an attributive modifier in a noun phrase. In practice, it marks a noun as something that has been done or made by someone, often in a way that emphasizes the completion or result of the action.

The most common example is sen tekemää virhettä, translated as “the mistake (that) he made.” In this construction, the head noun virhe on the singular partitive (virhettä) and the participle tekemiä/tekemä agrees in number and case to indicate a completed action associated with the noun. The form can also appear with other compatible head nouns, such as suunnitelma (plan) in phrases like tämän tekemää suunnitelmaa, meaning “this plan that was made.” The exact surface form adjusts to furthest syntactic agreement, but the core idea remains: a noun modified by a past-action participle expressing a thing that has been done.

Tekemää is most often encountered in written Finnish, particularly in prose that aims to sound precise or formal. It is part of the broader Finnish participle system, sitting alongside present active participles like tekevä and past passive participles like tehty. While not as common in everyday speech as more neutral constructions, tekemiä forms appear in media, literature, and advanced writing to highlight the action’s result.

See also: Finnish grammar, participles, past active participle (tekemä/tekemiä), partitive case.