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yā

ya

masc nom pl of ya (letter); masc instr sg of ya (letter); masc abl sg of ya (letter); masc voc sg of ya (letter); …

1. ya (pron): whoever; whatever; whichever
2. ya (letter): (gram) letter y; 34th letter of the alphabet; palatal semi-vowel
3. ya (cs): (gram) ya; suffix used to form impersonal and passive verbs
4. ya (cs): (gram) ya; conjugational sign of group 3 divādigaṇa verbs
5. yā (pron): whatever; whichever (woman)

Etymology. Pali yā (fem of ya) belongs to the Indo-European relative pronoun stem *yo-/*ye-, which produced Sanskrit yā, Latin qui/quae, Greek hos/hē, and English who/which. The interrogative and relative functions are ancient; yā acquired the generalizing sense "whoever" through the same semantic drift that shaped English "who" and "whatever" in conditional clauses.

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

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