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dveme

sandhi form

1. these two

Built from

• dve — stem · two
  Nominative/accusative dual of dvaya; from PIE *dwo-, seen in English 'two', Latin 'duo', Greek 'dyo'. The dual number marks exactly two of something.
• ime — stem · these (dual)
  Nominative masculine dual of the proximal demonstrative pronoun idam 'this'; i- is the stem root (related to English 'it'), and -me is the nominative masculine dual ending.

Analysis. dve (nominative/accusative dual of 'two') + ime (nominative masculine dual of 'this') — the two words coalesce where dve ends in -e and ime begins with i-, the final -e absorbing into the following vowel.

Etymology. dve from Indo-European *dwo- (cognates: English 'two', Latin 'duo', Greek 'dyo'); ime from the demonstrative stem i- (cognate with English 'it', Latin 'is', Greek 'hi-').

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

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