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viññāṇanti

viññāṇa

nominative singular neuter, with postposition iti

1. awareness; consciousness; cognition; mind; fifth of the five aggregates; lit. knowing distinctly
2. knowing; understanding; lit. knowing distinctly
3. with awareness; having consciousness; lit. knowing distinctly

Built from

• vi — prefix · apart, asunder
  Indicates clarity and discrimination; consciousness distinguishes phenomena into separate objects.
• ññāṇa — root · knowing, discerning
  From √jñā (Sanskrit jñātum, Latin gnōscere, English know). The shift to Pali ñ reflects inherited phonetic change from the retroflexed Indian root.
• iti — ending · postposition marking speech-end
  Grammatical particle quotatively framing viññāṇa as a term or concept in utterance.

Analysis. viññāṇa + iti, the postposition iti marking the end of speech or a conceptual boundary, here used to nominalize the noun in discourse.

Etymology. vi + √jñā (Sanskrit jñātum 'to know'). The prefix vi- ('apart, asunder') applied to the root for knowing yields 'knowing distinctly' or 'discerning awareness'—consciousness as the faculty that separates and identifies phenomena. Cognate with Latin gnōscere (English 'know') through Indo-European *ǵn̥-.

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

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