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bhūte

bhūta

masc acc pl of bhūta (pp); nt acc pl of bhūta (pp); masc loc sg of bhūta (pp); nt loc sg of bhūta (pp); …

1. existing; born; living; lit. become
2. true; correct; genuine; accurate; lit. become
3. being; living being; entity; lit. become
4. become; born
5. state; elemental state; element; lit. become
6. plant; lit. grown
7. born being; animal; creature; lit. become
8. like; as; similar to; lit. become
9. …

Built from

• bhū — root · become, be
  The root of becoming and existence itself; shared with English "be", Latin "fuī", Greek "phýein". The past participle fixes this dynamic concept as a noun: that which has become.
• ta — ending · past participle marker
  Marks completion of the action; here nominalized to mean "a being" or "an entity".

Etymology. Root √bhū (become, be) cognate with English be, Latin fuī (was), Greek phýein (grow, bring forth). The past participle bhūta literally means "become" or "that which has come into being"; in the locales (sg loc bhūte) it governs instrumental or locative contexts in the Suttas, often appearing in formulas like "bhūte bhūte" (being after being, creature after creature) to denote the stream of conditioned existents.

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

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