Danu
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An ethnic group of Myanmar. plural, plural-only
"Everywhere the Danu wears the turban and jacket of the Burman, but in most cases he prefers the Shan trousers to the Burmese loin-cloth."
- 1 The language spoken by the Danu people, considered by the Burmese government to be a dialect of the Intha-Danu language.
- 2 A hypothesised goddess of Irish mythology. Irish
"This [battle] appears in Celtic history as that in which the Tuatha dè Danann, the tribes of the goddess Danu fought and conquered the Fir Bolg on Midsummer's Day."
- 3 A Hindu primordial goddess who had numerous children. Hinduism
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Everywhere the Danu wears the turban and jacket of the Burman, but in most cases he prefers the Shan trousers to the Burmese loin-cloth."
Etymology
Borrowed from Burmese ဓနု (dha.nu.).
Learned borrowing from Old Irish, from a reconstructed nominative form of the genitive Danann (also spelled Donand or Danand). In particular, Danann is attested in the term Tuatha Dé Danann, which is typically translated "tribe of Danu" but used as the collective name for certain Irish gods (or, more prosaically, the people of a particular wave of immigration to Ireland, in the traditional history). The etymology is controversial and has been debated since the 19th century. Some scholars identify Danu with the goddess Anu, perhaps as a contraction of día Anu ("goddess Anu").
Borrowed from Sanskrit दनु (danu).
Related phrases
More for "danu"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.