Acault
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A male who has special role in Myanmar folk religion and behaves in a way usually associated with women.
"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')."
Example
More examples"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')."
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".
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.