‹ Back to the text

saccavādī

masc nom sg of saccavādī (adj); masc nom pl of saccavādī (adj); fem nom sg of saccavādī (adj); nt nom pl of saccavādī (adj); …

1. truthful; honest; lit. speaking truth
2. truth speaker; epithet of the Buddha; lit. speaking truth

Built from

• sacca — root · truth
  Derived from √sac, 'to follow, adhere'; truth conceived as what holds firm and endures. Cognates: English seek (to follow), Sanskrit sacate.
• vād — root · speak
  √vad, 'to speak, utter'; cognate with Latin vadere and Greek ὀδύσσεσθαι (odysseia). The concrete image is utterance as a step forward.
• ī — ending · agent noun
  Agent suffix forming masculine nouns in -ī; here it nominalizes √vad to mean 'one who speaks' or 'speaker'.

Analysis. sacca (truth) + vādī (one who speaks); a compound bahuvrihi meaning 'one whose speaking is truth' or simply 'speaker of truth'.

Etymology. sacca is the past participle of √sac (to follow, adhere to), hence 'what adheres, what is firm'—truth as that which holds fast. vādī is from √vad (to speak; cognate with Latin vadere 'to go', whence English wade, and Sanskrit vadati). The compound follows the productive Pali pattern of agent-noun + object (vādī from √vad + agent suffix -i).

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

Lite mode — plain HTML for e-readers and old browsers. Full version