anfälligen

Anfällig is a German adjective meaning susceptible, prone, or vulnerable to being affected by something. It is used to describe people, systems, materials, or conditions that tend to be influenced, harmed, or impaired under certain circumstances. The term can apply in medical, technical, social, and everyday contexts, for example to designate a person who is more likely to contract an illness, a computer system that is prone to errors, or a market segment that is easily influenced by trends.

The form anfälligen is an inflected form of the adjective. In German, adjectives are declined to agree with the noun they modify. The base form is anfällig; anfälligen occurs as the plural nominative and accusative after a definite determiner: die anfälligen, and in the dative plural the form is den anfälligen. Outside these cases, different endings appear (e.g., eine anfällige Person in the singular). Therefore anfälligen is not used as a standalone noun but as part of an attributive description in plural or specific grammatical contexts.

Common usage involves phrases such as anfällig für etwas, meaning susceptible to something, with for followed by the accusative: a person who is anfällig für Krankheiten (susceptible to diseases) or clinics with anfällige Systeme (vulnerable systems). Related nouns include Anfälligkeit or Vulnerabilität, which name the state or quality of susceptibility. In discourse, careful distinction is made between being physically vulnerable and being more broadly prone to influence or error.

Etymology traces anfällig to the prefix an- plus fähig, forming an adjective that denotes a propensity or tendency to be affected; the suffix -lich is typical for forming adjectives meaning characteristic of.