"neti neti" meaning in English

See neti neti in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} neti neti
  1. (Hinduism) In Vedic and subsequent Hindu philosophy, the doctrine of "not this, not that", which holds that Brahman (the Supreme Being, God) has absolutely no specific characteristics and cannot be described in positive terms. Wikipedia link: neti neti Tags: Hinduism Categories (topical): Hinduism Synonyms: neti-neti
    Sense id: en-neti_neti-en-phrase-PLr4gc4f Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for neti neti meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "neti neti",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Hinduism",
          "orig": "en:Hinduism",
          "parents": [
            "India",
            "Religion",
            "Asia",
            "Culture",
            "Earth",
            "Eurasia",
            "Society",
            "Nature",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1970, Rohit Mehta, The Call of the Upanishads (1999 edition), p. 257 (quoting the Upanishadic figure, Ajatasatru of Kasi)",
          "text": "And so: The indication of Brahman is Neti, Neti — Not this, Not this, for beyond saying Neti, Neti, there is nothing else possible — for It is Truth beyond Truth"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 July 20, Michael Ordona, “Going to the mat for Kerry”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2019-10-22",
          "text": "The multiethnic crowd wore gym clothes, traditional Indian garb and a few political T-shirts. […] [M]ost said they were drawn by the mix of yoga and politics — and a chance to say neti-neti to President Bush.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 September 3, Vithal C Nadkarni, “Of Angels & Crocodiles”, in India Times, The Economic Times, retrieved 2019-10-22",
          "text": "[T]he Brihadaranyaka Upanishad uses negatives to describe God: \"The Divine is not this and it’s not that (Neti, neti),\" Sage Yajnyavalkya tells his students.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "In Vedic and subsequent Hindu philosophy, the doctrine of \"not this, not that\", which holds that Brahman (the Supreme Being, God) has absolutely no specific characteristics and cannot be described in positive terms."
      ],
      "id": "en-neti_neti-en-phrase-PLr4gc4f",
      "links": [
        [
          "Hinduism",
          "Hinduism"
        ],
        [
          "Vedic",
          "Veda"
        ],
        [
          "Hindu",
          "Hindu"
        ],
        [
          "philosophy",
          "philosophy"
        ],
        [
          "doctrine",
          "doctrine"
        ],
        [
          "Brahman",
          "Brahman"
        ],
        [
          "God",
          "God"
        ],
        [
          "specific",
          "specific"
        ],
        [
          "describe",
          "describe"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Hinduism) In Vedic and subsequent Hindu philosophy, the doctrine of \"not this, not that\", which holds that Brahman (the Supreme Being, God) has absolutely no specific characteristics and cannot be described in positive terms."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "neti-neti"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Hinduism"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "neti neti"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "neti neti"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "neti neti",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Hinduism"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1970, Rohit Mehta, The Call of the Upanishads (1999 edition), p. 257 (quoting the Upanishadic figure, Ajatasatru of Kasi)",
          "text": "And so: The indication of Brahman is Neti, Neti — Not this, Not this, for beyond saying Neti, Neti, there is nothing else possible — for It is Truth beyond Truth"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 July 20, Michael Ordona, “Going to the mat for Kerry”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2019-10-22",
          "text": "The multiethnic crowd wore gym clothes, traditional Indian garb and a few political T-shirts. […] [M]ost said they were drawn by the mix of yoga and politics — and a chance to say neti-neti to President Bush.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 September 3, Vithal C Nadkarni, “Of Angels & Crocodiles”, in India Times, The Economic Times, retrieved 2019-10-22",
          "text": "[T]he Brihadaranyaka Upanishad uses negatives to describe God: \"The Divine is not this and it’s not that (Neti, neti),\" Sage Yajnyavalkya tells his students.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "In Vedic and subsequent Hindu philosophy, the doctrine of \"not this, not that\", which holds that Brahman (the Supreme Being, God) has absolutely no specific characteristics and cannot be described in positive terms."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Hinduism",
          "Hinduism"
        ],
        [
          "Vedic",
          "Veda"
        ],
        [
          "Hindu",
          "Hindu"
        ],
        [
          "philosophy",
          "philosophy"
        ],
        [
          "doctrine",
          "doctrine"
        ],
        [
          "Brahman",
          "Brahman"
        ],
        [
          "God",
          "God"
        ],
        [
          "specific",
          "specific"
        ],
        [
          "describe",
          "describe"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Hinduism) In Vedic and subsequent Hindu philosophy, the doctrine of \"not this, not that\", which holds that Brahman (the Supreme Being, God) has absolutely no specific characteristics and cannot be described in positive terms."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Hinduism"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "neti neti"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "neti-neti"
    }
  ],
  "word": "neti neti"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.