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.