Vocab: loobuma

to abandon

to back out of, to disclaim, to waive, to give up on something

Building blocks

• loo- - “shed” or “create”

• -bu- reflexive (an activity that is performed by the subject himself)

• -ma - infinitive ending

It’s likely derived from Finnish luopua (to abandon) and looking even further back from Proto-Finnic loodak (to create).

How to use it

In Estonian “who/what you abandon” is replaced with “of whom/of what you abandon”, which means that “who/what you abandon” is in the elative case (ending -st)

One way to think of this is that “abandoning” is actually “freeing yourself of something”, which makes the use of the Elative case (-st) more intuitive.

Another unique thing to note here is that sometimes instead of “what you abandon” we use "loobuma mida tegemast" which literally means "abandon what doing." However, it is idiomatically translated as "to give up doing something."

So for example both are correct:

1. I give up eating - ma loobun söömast (ending -mast)

2. I give up eating - ma loobun söömisest (ending -st)

The -mast form of a verb is formed regularly: just add “-st” to the “-ma” form of the verb:

• tegema + st = tegemast

• jooksma + st = jooksmast

• and so on

Examples

Õpilane loobus oma unistusest

Literally: “Student gave up his dream”

Idiomatically: “The student gave up on his dream”

Õpilane - Noun - Nom Sg, "student"
loobus - Verb - 3P Past Sg, "gave up"
oma - Pronoun - Gen Sg, "his"
unistusest - Noun - Elative Sg, "dream"

Ema loobus oma lastest

Literally: “Mother abandoned her children”

Idiomatically: “The mother abandoned her children”

Ema - Noun - Nom Sg, "Mother"
loobus - Verb - 3P Past Sg, "abandoned"
oma - Pronoun - Gen Sg, "her"
lastest - Noun - Elative Sg, "children"