संस्कृतव्याकरणम् · 24 of 24 Home
संस्कृतव्याकरणम् · शब्दकोशः

Twenty rules learned.
Now go say something.

Every page before this one asked "why does the language do this?" This one asks a different question: what do you actually say in a library, a market, a kitchen? The corpus of 9,007 declinable stems that has supplied every table in this series turns out to double as a small classical dictionary — so this page searches it by setting, reports plainly where it comes up empty, and shows the one habit — compounding — that lets you build the word yourself when it does.

वृक्ष
·
नैसर्गिकम्
→
tree
अ-stem · पुं. वृक्षः attested
प्रथमपदम् — the member a compound is built on द्वितीयपदम् — the member that governs the whole समासः — the single word that results

Analysis, then use

प्रयोगः

A reader who has followed this series from page 1 can already parse why देवेन means "by a god" and why राज्ञः is ambiguous between two cases. What that reader may still not have is a plain answer to "how do I say tree, or I want water, or how much does this cost?" — because every earlier page picked its words to illustrate a rule, not to furnish a vocabulary. This page inverts that: it picks a dozen everyday settings and reports which real words the corpus actually has for each one.

कोशः, न शास्त्रम्A dictionary you already had, used differently

Every nominal paradigm in this series — every declension table on page 5, every stem this whole series has ever declined — comes from one file, shabda/index.json, and every entry in it carries not just a set of case-forms but a gloss: C.gloss(stem, liṅga) returns the corpus's own paraphrase, in Sanskrit and, where the corpus supplies one, in English. Nothing about that changes when the goal changes from "prove a rule" to "build a vocabulary" — the same function, searched by meaning instead of picked by pattern, is what built every list on this page.

What that search actually looks like. Take "horse." C.gloss('अश्व', 'P') returns — the corpus's own Sanskrit paraphrase for the stem अश्व, masculine. That one call is the whole method: pick a concept, try the Sanskrit word a learner would reach for, ask the corpus whether it has a declinable entry under that spelling and gender. When it does, the word below is genuine and its forms are pulled, exactly as every table in this series has been. When it doesn't, this page says so — a coined word never gets a declension table it cannot honestly produce.
किं नास्तिWhy a classical kośa has modern gaps

The corpus behind this series is closer to an अमरकोश-style synonym dictionary than to a modern bilingual one: each entry is a cluster of Sanskrit words sharing a sense, harvested from classical verse. That makes it excellent for concrete, ancient things — every tree, animal, body part and season below is genuinely attested — and it makes it patchy for anything institutional or modern: पुस्तकम् "book," विद्यालयः "school" and व्याकरणम् "grammar" — a word this whole site is arguably about — are simply not headwords in it. That is not this page inventing a gap to be honest about; it is what the search actually returns, reported as found.

A gap is not a verdict on the word. पुस्तकम् is a perfectly real, well-attested classical word — just not a headword in this particular kośa. "Not in this corpus" and "not real Sanskrit" are different claims, and this page is careful to make only the first one.

When the corpus has no word, build one

Page 9 · समासः

Sanskrit's usual answer to a missing word is not to borrow one — it is to weld two existing words together. Page 9 already worked out the mechanism: two finished padas lose their own case-endings and become a single new prātipadika (2.4.71 ↗), and — the fact this page leans on — that new word is declined exactly as its last member would be. So a learner who knows page 9 does not need पुस्तकालयः to be a headword anywhere; they need only आलयः to be a real, declinable word, and the rest follows.

Not every member has to be attested. पुस्तक itself is not in this corpus at all — and it does not need to be. Once पुस्तकालयः is built, it is आलयः's declension that carries the whole compound; what पुस्तक contributes is only its meaning, not a grammatical requirement. विद्यालयः and क्रीडाङ्गणम् below are the stronger cases — both members are independently attested — but the mechanism is identical either way: whichever member comes last decides how the compound bends.

Pick a setting

Interactive

Every word below carries its gender and its stem-family, because a vocabulary list without either is close to useless — you cannot put a word in a sentence if you do not know how it declines. Click through to page 5 for the family's full paradigm, or straight to the corpus's own live declension tool for this exact word. Coined words are marked plainly and never carry a form this page did not pull.

Words at work

वाक्यानि

One sentence per setting, built the way page 5's were: every noun form below is pulled straight from that word's paradigm, cell by cell — never typed — and shown at its citation, pre-sandhi boundary, exactly as page 5's words were (page 3 covers what actually happens where two words meet in speech). The verbs are ordinary finite forms, typed directly, exactly as page 5's ददाति and वदति were; this page's whole contribution is which nouns to put in which cases, not the verb conjugation itself, which pages 11–13 already cover. Coined words are never bent into a sentence — an unattested stem has no paradigm to pull a form from, and this page does not guess one.

Nine settings, nine sentences

Addressing someone — the vocative, in passing

Page 5 covered the vocative as a reduced प्रथमा, not a real eighth case. Here it is simply useful: four of this page's most common family and school words, called out to directly.

Every word on this page

Coverage

SettingWordGenderMeaningStatus
Where this comes from. Attested rows are read live from shabda/index.json — — through C.gloss and C.paradigm, exactly like every other table in this series; the English glosses are this page's own short translations of the corpus's Sanskrit paraphrase, since a working vocabulary list needs one language the reader already has. Coined rows carry no pulled form at all — only a meaning and, where the word is a compound, the attested member that decides its declension.

Check yourself

अभ्यासः

Six questions. Every answer names the fact that settles it.