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Sekä joukko että poliisi etsivät uhria kaikin voimin.

Sekä joukko että poliisi etsivät uhria kaikin voimin.
Both the group and the police searched for the victim with all their might.
From Lesson 192:The instructive plural case (-in)·Finnish

Questions & Answers about Sekä joukko että poliisi etsivät uhria kaikin voimin.

How does the instructive case work in the phrase kaikin voimin?
The instructive case adds -in to the plural stem of a word to describe how an action is done. Here, both kaikki (stem kaikk-) and voima (plural stem voim-) take the ending to make kaikin voimin (with all might). This case is mostly used in fixed idiomatic expressions like this one, rather than being freely attached to any everyday noun.
Could I use the adessive case (kaikilla voimilla) instead of the instructive here?
Grammatically, the adessive (-lla/-llä) is the standard way to say you do something with a tool or instrument. However, kaikin voimin is a deeply established idiom in Finnish. Using the adessive here would sound clunky and unnatural to a native speaker, even though the literal meaning is identical.
Joukko and poliisi are singular nouns. Why is the verb etsivät plural?
When two subjects are connected by the conjunction pair sekä ... että (both ... and), they combine to form a plural subject. Because multiple parties are doing the action, the verb must take the plural -vat ending.
Is the verb etsivät in the present or past tense here?
Based on the translation, it is in the past tense (searched). For verbs ending in -iä like etsiä, the past tense indicator -i- merges with the stem, making the third-person plural exactly the same in both the present (he etsivät) and the past (he etsivät). You have to rely entirely on context to tell them apart.
Why is uhria in the partitive case?
The verb etsiä (to search for) is a partitive verb. Because searching is an ongoing action and there is no guarantee you will actually find what you are looking for, the object of the search must always be in the partitive case.

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