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atikkantamānusikāya

atikkantamānusaka

fem instr sg of atikkantamānusaka (adj); fem dat sg of atikkantamānusaka (adj); fem abl sg of atikkantamānusaka (adj); fem gen sg of atikkantamānusaka (adj); …

1. surpassing normal human ability; superhuman; lit. surpassed human

Built from

• ati — prefix · beyond, exceeding
  Concrete imagery of going past a boundary or mark; shows excess and surpassment. Cognate with Greek eti 'still, besides'.
• kam — root · go, move
  The root √kam means motion or going; here combined with ati- to mean 'go beyond, transcend'.
• ta — ending · past participle
  Past participle ending -ta forms atikkanta 'surpassed, transcended', functioning as an adjective stem.
• mānusa — stem · human
  Related to Sanskrit mānuṣa and English 'man'; the stem to which ka is attached.
• ka — ending · qualitative suffix
  The diminutive or qualitative suffix -ka, here nominalizing the adjective into a substantive meaning 'thing characterized by being superhuman'.

Analysis. atikkanta- (past participle of atikkamati, 'surpassed, transcended') + mānusa- ('human') + -ka (diminutive/qualitative suffix): 'that which has transcended the human', used predicatively of states or faculties beyond ordinary human reach.

Etymology. ati- ('beyond, exceeding') + kamati ('goes, moves') = atikkamati 'surpasses'; mānusa from manussa 'human', cognate with Sanskrit mānuṣa and English 'man'. The prefix ati- captures the sense of going beyond a natural limit; mānusa grounds the word in the human measure from which the transcendence departs.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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