Ellujäämist

Ellujäämist is a Finnish noun that denotes the act or process of surviving, particularly under difficult or dangerous conditions. It can refer to the survivability of a person, group, organism, or system, as well as the deliberate strategies and practices intended to preserve life and health when normal conditions fail. In everyday Finnish, ellujääminen or selviytyminen are more common, while ellujäämist appears mainly in specialized or academic contexts.

The term is formed from the verb ellujääminen (to survive) with the suffix -mist, which yields an abstract noun describing a process, state, or practice. As a result, ellujäämist emphasizes the activity or capability of surviving rather than the mere act of surviving.

Usage is relatively rare outside of technical writing or literary analysis. It may appear in discussions of resilience theory, disaster planning, military field manuals, or survival literature to highlight not only that survival occurred but the methods, conditions, and actors that contributed to it. In most everyday contexts, ellujääminen or selviytyminen remains the preferred terms.

Related concepts include ellujäämiskyky (survivability or ability to survive) and ellujäämistaito (survival skills). The term is also connected to broader Finnish terms for resilience, such as resilienssi, and to the English loanwords survivability and resilience in technical writing.

See also: resilience, survivability, survival, disaster preparedness.