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gatanti

gata

past participle; nominative plural masculine (gatanti = gataṃ + iti, 'gone ones' used as independent clause)

1. gone (to); went (for)
2. become (a certain way); being in (some state); gone into (a state)
3. related to; referring to; kind of; type of; of a sort
4. going; walking; lit. gone
5. walked; travelled
6. passed

Built from

• gat — root · go, walk
  √gam, the root of motion. Cognate: English come (Old English cuman), Latin venio, Sanskrit gam-. The concrete sense is forward motion through space.
• a — ending · past participle, nominative plural masculine
  The -a suffix marks the stative or resultant state (what one has become by going). The plural masculine ending -i in gatanti agrees with a masculine plural subject, here referring to 'those who have gone' or 'the gone ones.'

Analysis. gatanti = gataṃ (past participle, accusative singular neuter, used predicatively) + iti (quotative particle, 'thus'; here marking the absolutive utterance 'they are gone'). The form gatanti itself is nominative plural masculine of gata, answering 'what are they?' with 'gone ones.'

Etymology. √gam 'go' (cognate: English come, Latin venio, Sanskrit gacchati). The past participle gata reflects Indo-European *gm̥-to-, the passive/stative verbal adjective. The prefix ā- in āgacchati 'comes' (toward the speaker) shows how the root reverses when prefixed: gacchati 'goes (away)', āgacchati 'comes (hither)'.

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

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