hinayana

1. 1.

   a major school of Buddhism teaching personal salvation through one's own efforts

   BroaderBuddhism
2. 2.

   an offensive name for the early conservative Theravada Buddhism; it died out in India but survived in Sri Lanka and was taken from there to other regions of southwestern Asia

   SynonymsHinayana Buddhism

   BroaderTheravada

Other forms of hinayana

plural

hinayanas·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about hinayana

What does hinayana mean?

hinayana means "a major school of Buddhism teaching personal salvation through one's own efforts". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in hinayana?

hinayana has 3 syllables: hi-naya-na. The stress falls on "hi".

What is another word for hinayana?

Close synonyms include Hinayana Buddhism. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hinayana a common word?

hinayana is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.