työskentelivät

Työskentelivät is the third-person plural past indicative form of the Finnish verb työskennellä, meaning "they worked" or "they were working." It denotes a completed or ongoing action in the past performed by multiple subjects.

Grammatical properties: the form is used for past-tense statements about plural agents (he, she, they equivalent). It behaves like other Finnish past-tense verb forms, combining the verb stem with past tense morphology and the plural personal ending. The corresponding present-tense plural form is työskentelevät ("they work/are working"), and the infinitive is työskennellä ("to work").

Usage examples: common contexts include descriptions of past employment, collaborative activities, or duration of past work. Example sentences in Finnish: He työskentelivät samassa yrityksessä vuosia (They worked at the same company for years); Opiskelijat työskentelivät projektin loppuun asti (The students worked until the project was finished).

Register and variations: the word is neutral and standard in both spoken and written Finnish. Dialectal pronunciations may vary slightly, but the form and meaning remain consistent. Negation, questions, and compound tenses follow standard Finnish grammatical patterns when combined with työskentelivät.

Etymology: työskennellä derives from työ ("work") plus a verbal suffix that formed the modern verb; työskentelivät is its regular past plural inflection. Related forms include työskenteli (he/she worked) and työskentely (the act of working).