veitsiin

Veitsiin is the illative singular form of the Finnish noun veitsi, meaning knife. In Finnish grammar, the illative case expresses motion toward or into something, and it is formed with suffixes such as -iin, -oon, -iin depending on the word’s stem. For nouns ending in -i, the illative singular commonly becomes veitsiin, following regular patterns of Finnish vowel harmony and consonant handling.

The base word veitsi refers to a cutting tool with a blade and handle, used in cooking, crafts, and dining contexts. The illative form veitsiin carries no independent lexical meaning beyond “to the knife” or “into the knife,” but it enables expressions of direction or movement involving a knife within sentences.

In usage, veitsiin appears in contexts describing actions directed toward a knife, such as instructions, descriptions of handling or placing objects near a knife, or narrative passages where the knife is the destination or point of reference. As a standard example of illative formation, veitsiin demonstrates how Finnish can attach the illative suffix to a stem ending with -i to indicate directional meaning.

For language learners, veitsiin exemplifies the illative pattern that arises with stems ending in i and helps illustrate how suffixes modify meaning without changing the root word. The form is routine in written and spoken Finnish, though the precise choice of illative suffix depends on the word’s stem and phonological rules.