nidhī

nidhi

masc nom pl of nidhi (noun); masc acc pl of nidhi (noun); masc voc pl of nidhi (noun)

treasure; trove; hoard; lit. placed down
store; lit. placed down

Built from

ni — prefix · down, into
The concrete sense of placing downward (into the earth, into a safe place) underlies the abstract meaning of a hidden or accumulated store.
dhī — root · place, put
Related to English do, Latin facere, Sanskrit dhā. The root captures the act of depositing or laying something away.

Etymology. ni- (down, into) + √dhā (place, put): literally "placed down", hence a repository or store. Cognate with Sanskrit nidhi. The prefix ni- appears in English nether and German nieder; √dhā is cognate with English do, Latin facere, Sanskrit dhā. The semantic shift from physical placement to a hidden or accumulated store is typical of treasure vocabulary across Indo-European languages.

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

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