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vedanā
vedana
masc nom pl of vedana (adj); fem nom sg of vedana (adj); fem nom pl of vedana (adj); nt nom pl of vedana (adj); …
- vedanā (fem): (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) felt experience; feeling; feeling tone; hedonic tone; sensation (coming from six sense experience); second of the five aggregates; lit. causing to know
- vedanā (fem): pain; lit. causing to know
- vedana (adj): with felt experience; with a feeling; having a feeling tone; lit. causing to know
Built from
- ved — root · to know
The root √vid means "to see, perceive, know"; it appears also in vindi (finds), viññāṇa (consciousness), and has Indo-European cognates in Latin vidēre (see), English wit/wise, and German wissen (know).
- anā — ending · agent, experience
The feminine suffix -anā nominalized the root to create an abstract noun. This suffix forms agent nouns and abstract nouns, often with a sense of the action or result of the root — here, the experience or knowing itself rather than the act of knowing.
Etymology. From √vid "to know" (cognate with Latin vidēre, English wit/wise, German wissen) with the feminine agent suffix -anā. The word's core sense is "that which makes known" or "knowing-experience" — the felt quality of sensory contact that announces itself to consciousness. In Buddhist psychology, vedanā is the immediate hedonic resonance (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral) that arises with every perception.