acault
/ət͡ʃaʊ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A male who has special role in Myanmar folk religion and behaves in a way usually associated with women.
Example Sentences
- "According to a recent travelers' report (Coleman, Celgon, and Gooren, 1987), the hijra community of India (see this chapter) has a counterpart in Burma, where men who live as women are called acault (pronounced a·chow')."
- "Because Manguedon is the spirit who controls success and good fortune, acault become an important intermediary between those seeking good fortune and success and the -^([sic]) spirit god."
- "A Burmese acault tells an ethnographer he is a woman only by his sexual role; otherwise, he expresses himself through his penis and its orgasms."
- "Recall in any event that is not unusual, as Coleman et al. (1992:317) reported, for a male to have sexual relations with an acault or, presumably with someone in one of the other lexically marked subject positions, […]"
Etymology
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".
Word Breakdown
- Root: အခြောက်
Inflected Forms
Phrases
two-spirit
and the usage notes about those terms