Sairastanut

Sairastanut is a Finnish word that functions as the past participle of the verb sairastaa, meaning to fall ill or to suffer from illness. It denotes that someone has experienced illness at some point up to the present.

In Finnish grammar, sairastanut is used in two main ways. It forms part of the perfect tenses with the auxiliary olla, as in hän on sairastanut influenssan, which translates to “he has had the flu” or “has been ill.” It can also serve as a non-finite attributive participle describing a noun, for example sairastanut potilas, meaning “a patient who has been ill.” The form is built from the stem sairast- with the past active participle ending -anut/-nyt.

Sairastanut is commonly encountered in medical contexts, health reporting, and biographical writing, where a person’s illness history is relevant. It reflects a completed period of illness up to the present moment rather than necessarily indicating current symptoms. The term is related to sairastaa (to fall ill) and to sairaus (illness). Its semantic opposites depend on context and can include parantunut or toipunut (recovered) when referring to recovery, or kipeä and sairastamassa for ongoing illness in different constructions.

Overall, sairastanut is a standard, neutral term in Finnish for describing having been ill, used both in narrative and clinical language to convey a past illness history.