yllätti

Yllätti is the past tense form of the Finnish verb yllättää, which means to surprise, astonish, or shock someone. It is used to indicate that a person or event caused surprise in another person. For example, Uutiset yllättivät monet ihmiset. (The news surprised many people.) Käytöksesi yllätti minut. (Your behavior surprised me.)

In Finnish, yllättää takes a direct object in the accusative when describing who is surprised. Common objects include minut, sinut, hänet, heidät, referring to the person or people who were surprised. The subject of the sentence is the doer of the surprise, and the verb form yllätti corresponds to third-person singular past tense (he/she/it surprised).

The word is widely used in everyday speech as well as in writing, and it can describe both pleasant and unpleasant surprises. It is often paired with nouns or pronouns to specify what caused the surprise, and it can appear in various tenses by combining the stem yllätt- with appropriate finite endings.

Related forms include the noun yllättäjä (one who surprises) and the adjective yllättynyt (surprised, as in “I was surprised”). The present tense form is yllättää (to surprise). In usage, yllätti conveys a completed action in the past, while yllättää refers to the ongoing or future act of surprising.

Notes: The exact etymology of yllättää is not widely documented in standard references; it is considered native Finnish, with no widely accepted direct cognates outside the language.