Yskän

Yskän is the genitive form of the Finnish noun yskä, which means cough. In Finnish grammar, the genitive singular is formed with the suffix -n, yielding yskän. The form is used to express possession or association, for example in phrases such as potilaan yskän hoito (the treatment of the patient’s cough) and yskän vuoksi (because of the cough).

In typical usage, yskän appears in compound noun phrases that describe characteristics or circumstances related to a cough. It often appears in medical or health contexts, but it also occurs in everyday speech when discussing symptoms. The construction is a standard example of how Finnish employs the genitive to link a noun to another noun that defines or qualifiers it.

Etymologically, yskä comes from Finnish roots within the Finnic language family, with the genitive suffix -n added to form yskän. This pattern is common across many Finnish nouns, where the possessive or descriptive relation is conveyed by placing the genitive form before another noun or a prepositional element. While yskän is primarily a grammatical form, its use is widely understood in both clinical writing and ordinary conversation to denote “the cough’s” something.

See also: yskä, Finnish grammar, genitive case.