‹ Back to the text

tadassa

sandhi contraction: tad + assa

1. that would be; that could be
2. that is his

Built from

• tad — root · that, it
  Demonstrative pronoun from *tod-, marking the third person and neuter gender. Cognate with Latin demonstratives and Greek to-.
• assa — ending · would be; his
  Either optative ending on atthi 'is' (expressing possibility or wish) or genitive singular possessive. The form carries both temporal remoteness (subjunctive mood) and relational meaning (possession).

Analysis. tad (neuter nominative singular demonstrative pronoun 'that') + assa (genitive singular masculine of so 'he', or optative of atthi 'to be'). The contraction shows the elision of d before a in rapid speech.

Etymology. tad from Indo-European *tod- (that, the one), cognate with Latin tod- (in demonstratives), Greek to- (article, as in tó 'the'); assa from *es- (to be), the same root as English is, Latin esse, Greek einai.

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

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