Finnish Peculiarities, Part III: “Fiilistellä”

I continue with the short series that I introduced in a post a couple weeks ago, showcasing some peculiar, hardly translatable Finnish words. In the previous two posts I examined rather old terms, but this time around I want to discuss a relatively novel one: the verb fiilistellä.

As you might have guessed by the looks of that word already, the stem for fiilistellä actually comes from English. (Due to the global prominence of English language, that is hardly an uncommon circumstance with novel Finnish words.) In the present case, the stem is “feeling” (or, “feel”). As far as I can tell, however, fiilistellä is not directly derived from “feeling,” but rather from another Finnish term which in turn was derived from it. That other Finnish term is the noun fiilis.

A further intriguing fact about this is that, fiilis was not a simple loan word: it was not a Finnishized version of the English “feeling,” but was more or less a real novelty, a new concept in its own right, only inspired by and loosely utilizing or building upon “feeling.”

That is, from the beginning, fiilis had a peculiar meaning of its own. Or, a duality of meanings, actually. For the meaning of fiilis is, either the general feel or vibe of a situation, or the general feelings that someone is having at the moment. “Mikä fiilis?” (literally: “What fiilis?”; or, “How’s the fiilis?” ) is a question that someone might ask you at a party, for instance, or in a rock concert, or in some other social event, to enquire about your feelings in that situation: are you having fun, blown away even, or are you perhaps disappointed with the event? But also, “Hyvä fiilis täällä!” (“Good fiilis here!”) is something that one might exclaim to others, meaning, roughly, “Good vibes / atmosphere here!” 

However, when the verb fiilistellä evolved, it again came to mean something rather different from the noun fiilis.

When someone is doing fiilistely (I fiilistelen, you fiilistelet, he/she fiilistelee, we fiilistelemme, you (plural) fiilistelette, they fiilistelevät), what they are doing is, basically, reflectively enjoying (the ambiance of) a situation, or the positive feelings it arouses in them, and to an extent intentionally pumping up those positive feelings in themselves and perhaps also in others.

Usually it is the present situation, or something that has just happened a brief moment ago, but it is also possible to fiilistellä about a long past event.

Secondly, please appreciate that there is not a trace of any kind of malicious mentality involved in fiilistely per se; that alone makes it different from the English verb “to gloat,” for example. Of course, someone might take offense from your fiilistely, or become jealous and angry or sarcastic about it, but fiilistely as such is purely a positive thing, just self-reflective enjoyment. Often a pretty good translation would be that one is “savoring the moment”; or, in the more unfrequent case where it is prompted by a long past event, “reminiscing fondly.” But there is something more to it than that.

A few examples might be helpful. Perhaps you see this beautiful sunset, while sipping a nice drink and reflecting upon what a great day you had today and how you do not really have a worry in the world at the moment, that life is just very good right now. Or, suppose that you (and perhaps some friends or collaborators) rejoice about and take pride in some great performance you just did, like a job exceptionally well done at work, or a victory in some sports competition. Or, maybe you are listening to a good band at a club, having a good time. Or, you could just hear an effective song on radio, a song that perhaps reminds you of your youth or of some happy times. Somewhat miscellaneous lot though these examples might sound, any of them could plausibly be expected to give occasion to fiilistely.

Fiilistely is close to or shares some overlap with the English term “rejoicing,” then, but, significantly, it is much more (self-)reflective, oftentimes even contemplating, than simple “rejoicing.” The contrast is stronger still to more overwhelming emotions, and hence to expressions like “going euphoric.” Much the same contrast could be drawn even to the term “celebrating.” These all tend to be less reflective, and also more intense, affairs than fiilistely ... Euphoria and celebrating are much less under the subject’s mental control than fiilistely.

With fiilistely you are (supposed to be) rather more in control of your emotionality, able to consciously guide the way you are feeling. This is not to say that there is not a good deal of raw emotionality involved: it is hard if not impossible to just make a cool and calculated decision to fiilistellä if you do not feel like it; and, on the other hand, the emotionality involved in fiilistely may not be easy to control – for example, it might make you say or do things that you regret later, perhaps something that, in retrospect, you suspect made you come across like an idiot, or a boastful ass, to some other people in the room. Still, we should say that, when you fiilistelet, you maintain some composure. Of course, that naturally goes together with the fact that fiilistely is less intense than, say, celebrating. (We have another, much more aptly corresponding Finnish term for “celebrating”: juhlia).


One good example to illustrate this all is that, imagine that you are playing football and score a goal for your team. You will then at first be too euphoric, for sure, much too emotional and too much in the middle of it all, to fiilistellä about it. You will be celebrating the goal with your teammates, but that is different from fiilistely. And after the celebrations, if the game still goes on and you are actively involved in it, the playing of the game will probably require too much concentration for you to have a chance to fiilistellä about that earlier performance until the game is over: if you fiilistelet in the middle of something like that, chances are that you get distracted and the opponent in turn scores a goal on your team because you are not paying attention, are just standing there glassy-eyed, as it were, grinning stupidly about something you did five minutes ago. After the game, however, it is different; then you could and probably will allow yourself to fiilistellä about that goal you scored.

As said, fiilistely need not be retrospective and indeed more often than not takes place either at the moment of or immediately after the event that one fiilistelee about, but you really cannot do it when you have to concentrate on some physically or cognitively demanding task or performance, so if it is that sort of task or performance that you are about to fiilistellä, then you should do it retrospectively. By contrast, enjoying music, or a sunset, or some good company, for example, is not too demanding a task to prevent you from engaging in some fiilistely about the experience concurrently. So it depends on what it is that you fiilistelet about.

The external causes of, or the things that could give rise to (the lust for) fiilistely range from small and altogether subjective joys of life to truly remarkable events for which just about anybody not pumped full of tranquilizers would be over the moon. One pretty good rule of thumb for spotting a situation where you could use the term fiilistellä is whether the person seems to be reflecting about a situation and could plausibly be expected to say something like: “Yes, me likey very much; more of this, please!”; or, “Yeah, I’m the Man! Sometimes I really am, right?”; or, perhaps: “Damn, that was good! Life is good (or, was good back then)!” If that is the case, you might conceivably say that the person fiilistelee. 

Notice, then, that there is at least a little bit of effort involved in fiilistely – it is something that one must be actively doing. One is pumping up the positive feelings (and perhaps trying to evoke them in others, too) for starters; also, one is quite self-consciously enjoying those positive feelings, as if tasting them. It is a little bit like rolling those feelings on the taste buds of one’s brain/mind. And, if you can see that the situation is a rare one, you might be putting even more conscious effort into it, perhaps trying to pay attention to and savor and memorize as many aspects of it as possible. In some exceptional cases, when one, in a way, goes to “eleven” with fiilistely, it could even lead to a good bit of nostalgizing; that is, you might be saying to yourself: “That was one of the best moments of my life,” or, “This here, right now, might just be one of the best moments in my life.” More often, of course, one only fiilistelee about some little things in life, those mundane, everyday pleasures; it could be just that it is Friday (finally!) and that you have a plan to crack open a cold one to celebrate. You might well fiilistellä about that, too.

Having said that, I do not want to leave the impression that fiilistely is necessarily a solitary affair. In fact, you can very well fiilistellä together with others and make it a shared experience. In that case,  of course, those others would have to be prone to feeling similarly about the situation (if they don’t, they will not be likely to join you in fiilistely but might instead think you are a bit silly (if what you fiilistelet about is something that they find trivial), or might even take you for an inconsiderate asshole (if what you fiilistelet about is something that they find sad or appalling)). The others need not instantly be eager to fiilistellä with you though: you could try and win them over! You can also be quite explicit about it and ask those others to join you in fiilistely: “Let’s fiilistellään about this a little, c’mon! I mean, this is a pretty special, cool moment, isn’t it ...?”

There are obviously marked differences between solitary and group fiilistely: when you fiilistelet by yourself, it is certain to involve a good deal of self-reflection, whereas when you fiilistelet with a group of others, it might shift closer to group celebrations; but even in the latter case, I would advice against equating fiilistely with celebrating: there is always the aspect of reflectiveness involved, which pretty much guarantees that fiilistely will not be too frantic and emotional.

One more thing. I think the tendency to fiilistely is to a certain degree very much a matter of personality. That is to say, fiilistely is something that agrees much better with certain kinds of personalities, but not with others. I mean, some people just seem unable to (allow themselves to) fiilistellä about things. For some people, it might be that they are too harsh for themselves. For others, perhaps they are afraid that if they fiilistelevät about something, then something truly horrible will soon happen, bad karma come bite them in the ass. For some people, it might be that they are too sombre, pessimistic, or bitter to allow themselves to fiilistellä; their personality or life-history prevents them from admitting that something truly and unequivocally good just happened. And, of course, there will be some truly nasty mother bunkers whose only moments of happiness and enjoyment in life come from other people’s adversities, for whom schadenfreude (in Finnish, vahingonilo) is the only kind of enjoyment they are capable of feeling; and schadenfreude is obviously very different from fiilistely. Yeah, I feel sorry for those kinds of people incapable of fiilistely. To me it has always been natural to find reasons to fiilistellä a little bit every now and then. I think it is one of those things that make life worth living.