Etymology

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Today it means: A male who has special role in Myanmar folk religion and behaves in a way usually associated with women. Full definition →

Burmese အခြောက်
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The story

  1. Burmese · borrowed fromအခြောက်“dry article; homosexual man”
  2. English todayacault

A mistranslation of Burmese အခြောက် (a.hkrauk /⁠ăhcauʔ⁠/, “dry article; homosexual man”), from အ (a. /⁠ă⁠/, noun-forming prefix) + ခြောက် (hkrauk /⁠hcauʔ⁠/, “dry”). Apparently introduced before 1987 by Coleman et al. (see quotation below) who had an "inability to speak the local languages" and a "lack of training in anthropology".

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.