This article is an extension of my Old words vs. new words ending in -i article. Here, you can find a longer list of words that belong to one of the types of words ending in -i: ovi-type words.

There are many wordtypes in Finnish that ends in an -i. Usually, they are divided into “old” and “new” words. These terms refer to the relative age of these words in the Finnish language. Old words have existed for millennia. Often, these are words related to nature (such as järvi “lake” and kivi “stone”), the human body (such as poski “cheek” and polvi “knee”) or other things that have been part of everyday life in the early years of Finnish inhabitation (such as kilpi “shield” and suksi “ski”).

Within the “old word” category, there are some subtypes. For words belonging to to ovi-type, the most distinguishable element in the inflection is the partitive case: these words will have their final -i replaced by -ea when inflected in the partitive case.

1. Inflection of the word ovi

Typical for this wordtype is that the -i changes into an -e- when you add, for example, the partitive or genitive suffix.

2. Words that inflect like ovi

In the following table, I’m providing you with a translation for each word. These translations are of course limited because I wanted to preserve a reasonable table width. In addition, I’m including the singular partitive (mitä?), genitive (minkä?) and inessive (missä?) forms as well at the partitive plural form (marked as PP below).

My list contains only base words. Many of these words can also be found in compound words. Wiktionary has a list which includes many compound words here.

I hope you find some useful ovi-type words in this article to study! Similar articles like this one will be published later on, detailing and listing other types of words ending in i, such as words that inflect the same way as pieni, or as käsi.