སྐུ

Tibetan

Etymology

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-kəw (“body; chest; thorax; corpse”). Cognate with Burmese ကိုယ် (kuiy, “body”) and Chinese 軀 (OC *kʰo, “body”).

Pronunciation

• Old Tibetan: /*sku/
• Lhasa: /ku˥˥/

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• Old Tibetan:
  • IPA^(key): /*sku/ (reconstructed)
• Ü-Tsang
  • Tibetan pinyin: gu^f
  • (Lhasa) IPA^(key): /ku˥˥/

Noun

“body”

Plain	ལུས (lus)
Honorific	སྐུ (sku)

སྐུ • (sku)

1. (honorific) body
2. image, statue

   ཤིང་སྐུ ― shing sku ― wooden statue/image

   དངུལ་སྐུ ― dngul sku ― silvern statue/image

Derived terms

• འདྲ་སྐུ ('dra sku)
• སྐུ་གཟུགས (sku gzugs)
• སྐུ་བརྙན (sku brnyan)
• སྐུ་འདྲ (sku 'dra)
• སྐུ་ལུས (sku lus)
• སྐུ་སྤུར (sku spur)

References

• “སྐུ” in The Tibetan Living Dictionary, Mandala Collections, 2021.
• “སྐུ” in Tibetan-English Dictionary.