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therehi
thera
masc instr pl of thera (adj); nt instr pl of thera (adj); masc abl pl of thera (adj); nt abl pl of thera (adj); …
- old; elderly; senior; lit. lasting
- elder; senior monk; monastic of ten or more years standing; lit. lasting
- firm; solid; stable; lit. lasting
Built from
- ther — root · wear away, last, be old
From *ter- (to wear, rub, cross). The root's concrete sense of time's erosion underwrites the meaning 'lasting in years, ancient'.
- a — ending · masculine singular nominative
The base form; -a is the default masculine nominative singular ending in Pali, marking the masculine gender of nouns denoting persons.
- hi — ending · instrumental plural
The suffix -hi marks instrumental or ablative plural in this masculine noun form, showing that therehi denotes multiple elders and the grammatical relationships they bear to the action or predicate.
Etymology. From Indo-European *ter- 'to wear away, rub', cognate with Sanskrit tara- 'crossing over, old', Greek terein 'to watch, guard', and English 'tern' (a worn path). The sense 'lasting, worn by time' → 'old, senior' is characteristic of age-denoting words across Indo-European languages.