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pañcime

sandhi form: pañca + ime

1. these five

Built from

• pañca — root · five
  Cardinal number from PIE *penkwe. The concrete sense of the number (a handful, or the five fingers of one hand) underlies all usage.
• ime — stem · these (nom. pl. masc.)
  Nominative plural masculine of idam (this), the demonstrative pronoun. Here it agrees with a masculine plural noun in apposition or as copula.

Analysis. pañca (five) + ime (these, nominative plural masculine of idam). A sandhi contraction where pañca loses its final vowel before the vowel-initial demonstrative.

Etymology. pañca from PIE *penkwe, cognate with Latin quinque, Greek pente, English five, German fünf. The root appears across Indo-European languages with consistent form and meaning. ime is the nominative plural masculine of the demonstrative pronoun idam (this), from PIE *i-mo-, related to English this and German dieser.

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

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