tosissaan
Finnish
[edit]Etymology
[edit]The inessive plural of tosi (tosissa) with a possessive suffix.
Pronunciation
[edit]Adverb
[edit]tosissaan
- serious(ly), in earnest [with (genitive +) suhteen ‘about’]
- Olen tosissani tämän suhteen.
- I am serious about this. / I mean it/business. / I'm not fooling around.
Usage notes
[edit]This adverb can be used predicatively with olla (“to be”); it can be used as an adjective in other positions (such as attributively) by using oleva. Like many other similar adverbs, it is inflected by person in standard Finnish, but in spoken colloquial Finnish, it often appears in the third-person form even when referring to the speaker or interlocutor: Olen tosissani and Olen tosissaan are both possible but the latter is considered nonstandard; likewise Ootsä tosissas? and Ootsä tosissaan? (“Are you serious?”)
Inflection
[edit]| Personal/possessive forms of tosissaan | ||
|---|---|---|
| no possessor | — | |
| possessor | singular | plural |
| 1st person | tosissani | tosissamme |
| 2nd person | tosissasi | tosissanne |
| 3rd person | tosissaan tosissansa | |
Synonyms
[edit]- (seriously, in earnest): kunnolla, vakavissaan
Further reading
[edit]- “tosissaan”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish][1] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-03