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kañci

kaci

masc acc sg of kaci (pron); fem acc sg of kaci (pron)

1. kaci (pron): someone; something; anyone; anything; whoever
2. kañci (pron): someone; anyone; something

Built from

• ka — root · which, who (indefinite)
  The interrogative and indefinite pronoun stem, from PIE *kwo-. Concrete sense: asking "which one?" opens to "anyone, someone."
• ñci — ending · nom sg masc
  The nominative singular masculine ending of this pronoun class; ñci is the sandhi form arising from assimilation of the nasal n before the palatal c.

Analysis. kañci is the nominative singular masculine form of kaci; the -ñci ending is the sandhi form of the nominative singular marker -ci appearing after ka- (any-), with ñ arising from assimilation of n before c.

Etymology. ka- is an indefinite-pronoun stem cognate with Sanskrit ka-, Greek pou ("ever, at any time"), and English who; the basic sense is "which? who?" generalized to indefiniteness. Related to Indo-European *kwo- (interrogative-indefinite), which also gave Latin quod, Greek tis, English what.

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

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