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kinti

nt nom sg of kinti (noun); nt voc sg of kinti (noun)

1. ka (pron): who?; what?; which?
2. ka (pron): where?
3. ki (pron): who?; what?; which?
4. kinti (sandhi): how then?; what then?; in what way?
5. kiṃ (pron): who?; what?; which?
6. kiṃ (ind): how?; what?
7. kiṃ (ind): not to mention; much less; what about?
8. kī (masc): name of the reigning king at the time of Kassapa Buddha
9. …

Built from

• kiṃ — root · what, who
  The interrogative pronoun from IE *kwo-, shared with English who and what, Latin quis, Greek tis. Here it carries its most direct sense of questioning.
• iti — ending · thus, so (quotative)
  A quotative particle marking the boundary of reported speech or thought; appended to create an emphatic or rhetorical interrogative. In compounds it often signals a turn from statement to question.

Analysis. kiṃ (what?, an interrogative pronoun or particle) + iti (thus, so; a quotative particle marking reported speech or quoted thought). The combination 'what thus?' becomes an interrogative particle expressing perplexity, query, or rhetorical challenge: 'how then?' or 'in what way?'

Etymology. kiṃ derives from the Indo-European interrogative stem *kwo- (English who, what; Latin quis, quod; Greek tis, ti; Sanskrit ka, kim). iti is the quotative 'thus', marking speech boundaries. The merger of interrogative + quotative yields an emphatic interrogative commonly found at clause openings.

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

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