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duggatiṁ

duggati

accusative singular feminine of duggati (noun)

1. bad destination
2. lower realm (hell, animal birth, ghost realm)
3. unfortunate rebirth

Built from

• du — prefix · bad, wrong
  Privative and pejorative prefix cognate with Greek dys-. Conveys the sense of a pathway gone wrong or misaligned.
• gati — stem · going, destination, rebirth
  Feminine noun from √gam "go". In doctrinal usage, denotes the five or six realms into which one may be reborn according to karma.
• ṁ — ending · accusative
  Accusative singular marker. Here indicates the object of a verb like upapajjati "is reborn" or gacchati "goes to".

Analysis. du- (bad, gone wrong) + gati (going, destination, state of rebirth). A compound expressing unfavorable rebirth within saṃsāra.

Etymology. du- is cognate with Greek dys- (dysfunction, dystopia); gati derives from √gam "go". The prefix du- carries the concrete sense of something misaligned or gone wrong, applied here to the trajectory of rebirth.

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

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