smärtande

Smärtande is a Swedish present participle used as an adjective meaning painful or pain-inducing. It is formed from the noun smärta (pain) plus the -ande suffix, and describes something that causes pain or embodies pain. The term can function both attributively, as in smärtande symtom or smärtande känsla, and predicatively, in sentences such as symptomen var smärtande.

In usage, smärtande typically refers to physical pain but can also describe emotional or psychological distress. It is commonly found in medical writing and descriptive prose to convey ongoing or heightened pain, for example a smärtande rygg eller smärtande minne. The word emphasizes the active quality of pain rather than merely its existence, and it is often used to convey a sense of persistence or intensity.

Relation to other terms: smärtande is closely linked to smärta (pain) and to synonyms such as värkande (aching) or smärtlig in some contexts. While smärtande focuses on the experience or source of pain, terms like smärtsam or smärtsamma are more general adjectives for something that is painful or distressing. In medical contexts, more precise terminology may be used to describe types of pain (acute, chronic, nociceptive, neuropathic), but smärtande remains a common expressive option in everyday language and literature.

Etymology: the form derives from smärta with the participial suffix -ande, a productive construction in Swedish that creates adjectives describing ongoing states or actions related to the noun root.