Vastuullisen

Vastuullisen is the genitive singular form of the Finnish adjective vastuullinen, meaning responsible, reliable, or accountable. As an inflected form, vastuullisen does not function as a separate word with its own standalone meaning; instead it modifies a noun that is in the genitive case or appears in phrases where the possessed or related noun is in genitive.

In practice, vastuullisen is used to describe something related to responsibility when the noun it modifies is in genitive. For example, in phrases like vastuu­llisen henkilön päätös (the decision of the responsible person) or vastuu­llisen toiminnan tulokset (the results of the responsible activity), the adjective takes the genitive form to agree with the governed noun. The word can therefore appear in formal or written contexts, including legal, corporate, or academic language, where ownership, association, or attribution is expressed through the genitive case.

Etymologically, vastuullinen is formed from vastuu, meaning responsibility, plus the suffix -llinen, which denotes “having” or “characterized by.” The combination yields the sense of someone or something that bears or embodies responsibility. In everyday Finnish, the base form vastuullinen is more common before nouns (e.g., vastuullinen johtaja, a responsible leader), while vastuullisen appears when the noun is in genitive or when the phrase requires a genitive construction.

Translations into English typically render vastuullisen as “of the responsible” or, in broader sense, as part of a possessive or relational phrase.