Sairastuttaa

Sairastuttaa is a Finnish verb meaning to cause someone to become ill or to sicken. It is the transitive causative form of sairastua, which means to fall ill. The action is typically described as something that makes a person or a group become sick, such as a pathogen, toxin, or other illness-inducing factor. The word is commonly used in medical, epidemiological, and news contexts, as well as in more general reports about health effects.

Grammatically, sairastuttaa is a regular -uttaa verb. It is used with a direct object referring to the ill person or group, for example, virus sairastutti useita työntekijöitä (a virus sickened several workers) or virus sairastutti koko kaupungin asukkaat (the virus sickened the entire city’s residents). The verb forms according to standard Finnish conjugation include present tense: sairastutan, sairastutat, sairastuttaa, sairastutamme, sairastutatte, sairastuttavat; past tense: sairastutti; perfect or pluperfect forms: sairastuttanut, sairastuttanutte etc. In passive or participial constructions, forms like sairastutettu or sairastuttanut may appear, depending on voice and aspect.

Nuances and limits: sairastuttaa generally implies an external cause of illness affecting someone, such as a disease agent or harmful exposure. It is less common to use this verb for self-inflicted illness or for metaphorical expressions, where other verbs or phrases might be more natural. It contrasts with sairastua, which denotes the person’s own act of becoming ill.

See also: sairastua, tauti, epidemia, epidemiologia.