vääristää

Vääristä is a Finnish form that occurs in different grammatical contexts rather than as a standalone lexical item. In contemporary Finnish it is best understood as a declined form arising from two related but distinct sources: the adjective väärä meaning wrong or false, and the verb vääristää meaning to distort or misrepresent.

As an adjective form, vääristä appears when väärä is inflected to fit a noun in certain cases, notably in plural and in partitive or genitive arrangements. In practice this means that in phrases describing multiple wrong or false items, the word may appear as vääristä in the appropriate case form. The exact case and number depend on the noun governed and the sentence structure.

As a verb stem, vääristä is part of the verb vääristää. The base verb means to distort, misrepresent, or skew. In finite forms it yields forms such as hän vääristää (he distorts) or he vääristävät (they distort), in which vowel harmony and standard Finnish suffixes attach to the stem väärist-.

Usage: Vääristä appears primarily in written and spoken Finnish as part of larger phrases, and is not used independently. Its exact meaning is determined by whether it is functioning as an adjective form or as part of a verb conjugation.

See also: Finnish grammar; Väärä; Vääristää.