Laboratory medicine

Two verbs share the spelling befunden, and a lab report can use both. One is the past participle of befinden, a strong verb — befand, hat befunden — as in für richtig befunden, found to be correct. The other is a verb in its own right, made from the noun der Befund, and German, as a rule, conjugates a verb made from a noun as a regular, weak verb: die Ärztin befundet den Ausstrich, sie befundete, sie hat ihn befundet. So the participle of the laboratory verb is befundet, never befunden. The noun itself comes from befinden, which means the word has travelled from a verb to a noun and back to a second, regular verb. The rest of this page is what the doctor weighs before signing: how the sample was taken, what the value is set against, and why one number on its own proves very little.