tamas
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of tamas
< Sanskrit: darkness
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The city is suffused with a form of darkness that locals call tamas, which “is inseparable from the chthonic energy of Shiva, the city’s presiding deity, and the god of creative dissolution,” Taseer writes.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 30, 2019
As tamas must be present in some degree in all combinations, all intellectual operations are fraught with some degree of painful feeling.
From A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 by Dasgupta, Surendranath
They are sattva, explained as goodness and happiness; rajas, as passion and movement; and tamas, as darkness, heaviness and ignorance.
From Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2 by Eliot, Charles, Sir
Thus in the phenomenal product whatever energy there is is due to the element of rajas and rajas alone; all matter, resistance, stability, is due to tamas, and all conscious manifestation to sattva.
From A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 by Dasgupta, Surendranath
To quote his own words: "The germ of the idea ... must be discovered in that nocturnal darkness, that çārvaram tamas, which native mythologists in India had not yet quite forgotten in post-Vedic times."
From Cerberus, The Dog of Hades The History of an Idea by Bloomfield, Maurice
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
