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purisa

masc voc sg of purisa (noun); masc voc sg of purisa (adj); nt voc sg of purisa (adj)

1. man; male; person
2. servant; labourer; lit. man
3. (gram) grammatical person; 3rd 2nd 1st person
4. male; masculine
5. World Soul (in Sāṃkhya system)

Built from

• pur- — root · forward, ahead
  From *pro-, the sense of going before others; a concrete spatial idea (leading/in front) that generalized to 'man' as the foremost being.
• -isa — ending · agent noun
  Suffix deriving agent nouns (one who does/is); here combined with the spatial root to form the nominalised concept 'one who goes forward'.

Etymology. From Proto-Indo-European *pro-wi-s-o- (one who goes forward/forth), related to Sanskrit purusa and Latin prōrsum (forward). The root sense is 'the one who goes ahead'—etymologically 'foremost' or 'leader', a designation that crystallized into the general term for man or person. Compare English 'prow' (front of a ship) from the same *pro- stem.

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

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