"wanted DEAD or ALIVE..." adjectives in finnish

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solanum-tuberosum
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"wanted DEAD or ALIVE..." adjectives in finnish

Postby solanum-tuberosum » 2016-04-12, 10:19

Hei!

I'm trying to work out the difference between words that mean "alive" - elävä, elollinen and "dead" - kuollut, eloton, hengetön. Are they synonyms, or am I being deceived by dictionaries? Can you shed light on their usage and combinability?

Thanks in advance :)

Varislintu
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Re: "wanted DEAD or ALIVE..." adjectives in finnish

Postby Varislintu » 2016-04-12, 12:22

solanum-tuberosum wrote:Hei!

I'm trying to work out the difference between words that mean "alive" - elävä, elollinen and "dead" - kuollut, eloton, hengetön. Are they synonyms, or am I being deceived by dictionaries? Can you shed light on their usage and combinability?

Thanks in advance :)


Well, the very basic words for "alive" and "dead" are elävä and kuollut. The others you list have either special use-cases or an added dimension of meaning to them. So, technically they're synonyms, but outside the right context the non-basic words will sound odd, funny or just wrong.

solanum-tuberosum
Posts:2
Joined:2016-04-12, 9:57
Gender:female

Re: "wanted DEAD or ALIVE..." adjectives in finnish

Postby solanum-tuberosum » 2016-04-12, 18:36

Varislintu wrote:Well, the very basic words for "alive" and "dead" are elävä and kuollut. The others you list have either special use-cases or an added dimension of meaning to them. So, technically they're synonyms, but outside the right context the non-basic words will sound odd, funny or just wrong.

Thank you very much!

Could you please tell me something about these contexts? I understand that "elollinen" is something that possesses or possessed life, biological,"eloton" is something that doesn't possess life, and "hengetön" basically means dead, "kuollut". However, I cannot find any information, for example, about some finnish metaphors and/or collocations with these words. Maybe there are some interesting and not trivial ones that come to your mind? Like "Living Stone" or "dead colour" in English.


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