tiedonakaan

Tiedonakaan is a Finnish idiomatic expression describing an extreme lack of information about a subject. It roughly corresponds to “not a single piece of information” or “not even a clue” in English. The form is composed from tieto, meaning information or knowledge, with the negation-intensive suffix -kaan/-kään, a common device in Finnish to stress negation. In usage, tiedonakaan functions as an intensifier within negated clauses, typically to highlight scarcity of information in journalism, academic writing, or public discourse about data availability, secrecy, or transparency.

Despite its common usage in Finnish, tiedonakaan is relatively informal and stylistic rather than a formal term in information science, and it may be perceived as rhetorical rather than precise. In linguistic terms, it illustrates the -kaan/-kään suffix and the pattern of emphasizing negation in Finnish. The expression is part of a broader set of negation-focused constructions in Finnish, where such suffixed forms intensify the sense of absence or insufficiency.

See also sanaakaan; -kaan/-kään suffix; information transparency.