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cāgo

cāga

masc nom sg of cāga (noun)

1. giving up; relinquishing; abandoning
2. generosity; sharing; liberality

Built from

• cāg — root · abandon, cast off
  From √caj. The concrete image is releasing or letting fall; in doctrinal use, cāga names the virtue of non-clinging, the relinquishment of greed and attachment.
• a — ending · action noun
  Nominalizes the root into an abstract noun. In the nominative singular -a is the bare stem-ending of masculine nouns, here marking the lemma form.

Etymology. From √caj 'to abandon, leave behind'. The root is cognate with Sanskrit tyaj- and ultimately with Latin cad- (in cadaver, case) and English 'chaff' (what is cast off); all descend from the Indo-European root *kat- 'to fall, cast away'. In Pali, cāga develops from the action noun (verbal noun), acquiring both the concrete sense of abandoning and the ethical sense of giving as relinquishment of self-interest — central to Buddhist dāna (generosity).

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

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