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puthujjano

puthujjana

masc nom sg of puthujjana (noun)

1. common man; ordinary man; normal person; man in the street

Built from

• puthu — root · separate, distinct
  Originally spatial: 'wide, broad, spread out.' Extended to mean 'many, diverse, ordinary'—the undistinguished crowd rather than the exceptional individual.
• jana — root · person, people
  From PIE *gen- 'to beget, produce.' Cognate with Latin genus, Greek genos, English kin. In Pali designates a person or class of people.

Analysis. Compound of puthu (separate, distinct) + jana (person, people): a person of ordinary, undistinguished kind, one among the many rather than exceptional.

Etymology. puthu derives from PIE *p(e)r-tu- 'far, broad' (related to Sanskrit pṛthú 'wide, broad', English far); the sense shifts from spatial width to multiplicity and ordinariness. jana is cognate with Latin genus, Greek genos, English kin, from PIE *gen- 'to beget, produce'.

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

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