Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A Prakrit language that is a scriptural and liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Plural of palus.
  • noun The sacred language of the Buddhists in Ceylon and Farther India: a Prakritic dialect, or later form of Sanskrit.
  • Of or pertaining to the Pali language or alphabet.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun pl. of palus.
  • noun A dialect descended from Sanskrit, and like that, a dead language, except when used as the sacred language of the Buddhist religion in Farther India, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A Middle Indo-Aryan language (Devanagari पाऴि) of north India, closely related to Sanskrit; the sacred language of the Buddhist scriptures. It has no native script, so it may be written in various alphabets, including Devanagari, Burmese, and Roman.
  • proper noun The Prakrit language of the Buddha.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an ancient Prakrit language (derived from Sanskrit) that is the scriptural and liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for Sanskrit pālibhāṣā, language of the row, series of Buddhist sacred texts, from pāliḥ, row, perhaps of Dravidian origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Literally, pāli means "line" or "(canonical) text".

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Examples

  • 317 This line in Pali is simply amatagāmī, going to the ambrosial, or the not-dead.

    Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909

  • If nothing else comes of this, at least the taboo on using the word Pali has been blown apart. jayne

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009

  • D., either before or just after Buddhaghosa had flourished, and written his great commentaries on the prose works of the Vinaya and Sutta Pitakas, Dhammapāla of Kāñcipura (now Conjevaram, Madras Presidency), wrote down in Pali 7 the unwritten expository material constituting the then extant three Attha-katha's 8 on the Psalms, and incorporated it into his commentary on three other books of the Canon, naming the whole 'Paramattha-dīpanī,' or Elucidation of the Ultimate Meaning.

    Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909

  • Five hundred, and one or two more such 'round numbers,' are, in Pali, tantamount simply to our 'dozens of them,' 'an hundredfold,' and the like.

    Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909

  • Here are four episodes grouped about a name that occurs more frequently in Pali romance than any other woman's name. 15 The Therī is held up by the Buddha, according to Saŋyutta Nikāya, ii. 236, linked with another Therī, Khemā (Ps. lii.), as the standard and limit of what a woman in holy orders ought to be.

    Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909

  • As the gāthā in Pali stands here, it seems to mean: '"I see life steadily, and see it whole."

    Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909

  • The terms Pali and Sanskrit Buddhism are convenient and as accurate as can be expected of any nomenclature covering so large a field.

    Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2 Charles Eliot 1896

  • 7 He rewrote in Pali what had been handed down in Sinhalese, or perhaps in Tamil.

    Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909

  • This last task is especially tricky, because the writings called the Pali Canon are roughly as far in time from the founder as we from Shakespeare.

    Craig K. Comstock: A Buddhist Vision of Life Beyond Consumerism Craig K. Comstock 2010

  • This last task is especially tricky, because the writings called the Pali Canon are roughly as far in time from the founder as we from Shakespeare.

    Craig K. Comstock: A Buddhist Vision of Life Beyond Consumerism Craig K. Comstock 2010

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