Buddhism

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A faith with roots in ancient India offering a comprehensive approach to enlightenment through meditation and ethical living
2. An influential philosophy derived from Siddhartha Gautama's teachings, which emphasizes understanding suffering and achieving liberation
3. A spiritual practice originating from India that focuses on the path to enlightenment through ethical conduct, meditation, and wisdom

Etymology: "Buddhism" is a plain formation: the name "Buddha," meaning "awakened one," with the suffix "-ism" attached. The suffix comes from Ancient Greek "-ismos," which turned abstract verbs into nouns naming a doctrine, practice or system, so "Buddhism" is the name of the teaching associated with the Buddha, not a term that existed in his own time. Its ancestry runs back through Greek and Latin "-ismus" into the wider Indo-European family of suffixes. The base "Buddha" itself comes from Sanskrit, where the root "budh" means "to awaken" or "to know," so the title describes someone who has woken to the truth about existence. The source records that "Buddha" entered English as a borrowing, and the teaching was then named by attaching "-ism" to it in the same way English names other systems of belief, such as "Hinduism" or "Taoism."