gāmā

gāma

masc nom pl of gāma (noun); masc instr sg of gāma (noun); masc abl sg of gāma (noun); masc voc sg of gāma (noun); …

village; hamlet; lit. collection
group; class; type; family; lit. collection
vulgar; common; crude; lit. related to village

Built from

gā — root · go; gather
From √gam. The concrete sense is movement of people and animals congregating; spatially, motion toward a point.
m — ending · nominative plural (or instrumental/ablative singular)
Marks the case and number of the noun in this particular utterance.

Etymology. From √gam 'go' + suffix -a, originally 'a going together', hence 'gathering' or 'assembled group of dwellings'. Cognate with Latin germen 'sprout, offspring' (from *gen- 'come forth') and Greek genos 'kind, race', all from Indo-European *geme- 'come, go'. The spatial sense of movement toward assembly becomes the concrete sense of a congregation of houses.

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

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