Infektiivisiä

Infektiivisiä is a Finnish adjective form meaning infectious in English. It is the plural partitive form of infektiivinen and is used to describe nouns that can cause infection or are capable of transmitting infection. In Finnish, adjectives decline for number and case, so infektiivisiä appears when describing plural nouns in the partitive or other cases that require this form.

In medical and scientific usage, infektiivisiä describes agents, diseases, or conditions related to infection. Examples include infektiivisiä tauteja (infectious diseases) or infektiivisiä viruksia (infectious viruses). The term may also modify nouns such as organismia or ainetta to indicate infectious properties. The concept covers pathogens and pathogens-driven processes, rather than broad contagiousness alone.

The phrase is distinct from tarttuva, which in Finnish is used to describe contagiousness or transmissibility between individuals. Infektiivinen focuses more on the capability to cause infection or to be associated with infection, while tarttuva emphasizes the ease or mechanism of transmission. In practice, the two terms can overlap in everyday language, but they convey different nuances in clinical or epidemiological contexts.

See also: infectious disease, contagious, epidemiology, Finnish medical terminology.