Karma

How to spell karma

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce karma

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does karma mean?

1. nounThe principle that a person's actions determine their future fortune, or the resulting good or bad luck thought to follow from those actions.

Karma in a sentence

• She returned the lost wallet and joked that it was good for her karma.

• He believes that cheating customers will eventually catch up with him through bad karma.

Where does karma come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

Karma comes directly from the Sanskrit word karma, which literally means 'action', 'deed', or 'work', built on the verbal root kr meaning 'to do' or 'to make'. In the religious thought of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, the term grew to mean the sum of a person's actions across this life and earlier ones, understood as deciding their fate in lives to come. English picked the word up in the early nineteenth century as Western scholars began translating Indian sacred texts, and it kept its original spelling almost untouched. In everyday modern use it has softened into a casual idea that good or bad deeds eventually come back to reward or punish you. The same Sanskrit root kr also lies behind 'Sanskrit' itself, where it means 'put together' or 'well formed', a reminder that the spelling keeps the foreign k and the unexpected r before the m.

How the word is built

• karma (Sanskrit noun from the root kr: to do, to make)
• -ma (noun-forming suffix), literally 'action' or 'deed'