Sairastavalla

Sairastavalla is a Finnish inflected form of the present active participle sairaastava, used to describe someone who is ill. It is the adessive singular form, meaning it can function as a modifier that denotes the state of being ill when placed with a noun in the adessive case, as in phrases referring to a specific instance or location related to illness.

The base verb is sairastaa, meaning to become or be ill. The participle sairaastava expresses ongoing illness and can take various case endings to agree with the noun it describes. In its adessive form, this becomes sairastavalla, indicating “on/at the ill [one]” or more naturally, a phrase describing a person who is ill in a particular context. The plural adessive form is sairastavilla, used with plural nouns in the same way.

Usage and nuance: sairastavalla is typically used in more descriptive or formal contexts, especially in medical or clinical writing, to highlight the状态 of an individual who is sick. In everyday Finnish, speakers more often use simpler descriptors such as sairaas or the adjective sairaana (while ill) or refer to the person with the noun plus a separate clause. Sairastavalla tends to appear in sentences that specify location, condition, or possession within an adessive construction, for example in phrases like sairastavalla potilaalla or sairastavilla potilailla, meaning “the ill patient” or “the patients who are ill” when the ill state is central to the context.

See also: sairastava, sairaus, sairastaminen.