အဘိဓာန်

my-noun

အဘိဓာန် • (a.bhi.dhan) (classifier အုပ်)

a.bhi.dhan (romanization)
အုပ် (classifier)

Learned borrowing from Pali abhidhāna, from Sanskrit अभिधान (abhidhāna, “dictionary”). Cognate with Shan ဢၽီႉထၢၼ်ႇ (ʼǎ phḭ̂i thàan).

cog

Shan ဢၽီႉထၢၼ်ႇ (ʼǎ phḭ̂i thàan)


တနင်္ဂနွေ

desc

→ Shan: တၼင်းၼူၺ်ႇ (tǎ náng nòi)

→ Shan: တၼင်းၼူၺ်ႇ (tǎ náng nòi)

→ Pa'o Karen: တနင်ꩻနွေꩻ

→ Pa'o Karen: တနင်ꩻနွေꩻ

/tənɪ̀ɴɡənwè/

Inherited from Old Burmese တန်နှင်ကုနုယ်.

inh

တန်နှင်ကုနုယ်

Old Burmese တန်နှင်ကုနုယ်

inh+

တန်နှင်ကုနုယ်

my:တနင်္ဂနွေ


တနင်္လာ

→ Shan: တၼင်းလႃႇ (tǎ náng làa)

→ Pa'o Karen: တနင်ꩻလာႏ


အင်္ဂါ

my-noun

အင်္ဂါ • (angga)

Borrowed from Pali aṅga (“limb, member”).

bor+

part of body, body part, anatomical part, limb, member, organ


အင်္ဂါ

my-noun

အင်္ဂါ • (angga)

desc

→ Shan: ဢင်ႇၵႃႇ (ʼàng kàa)

→ Shan: ဢင်ႇၵႃႇ (ʼàng kàa)

→ Pa'o Karen: အင်္ဂါႏ

Borrowed from Sanskrit अङ्गार (aṅgāra). Cognate with Mon အၚာ.


ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး

→ Pa'o Karen: ဗုဒ္ဓဟူꩻ

→ Shan: ပုၵ်ႈတႁူး (pūk tǎ húu)

→ Shan: ပုၵ်ႈတႁူး (pūk tǎ húu)

From Sanskrit बुध (budha, “Mercury”). Cognate with Shan ပုၵ်ႈတႁူး (pūk tǎ húu) and Mon ဗုဒ္ဓဝါ (buddhawā).

cog

Shan ပုၵ်ႈတႁူး (pūk tǎ húu)


ကြာသပတေး

desc

→ Pa'o Karen: ကျာႏသပတေꩻ

→ Pa'o Karen: ကျာႏသပတေꩻ

ၵျႃႇသပ်ႈပတေး

→ Shan: ၵျႃႇသပ်ႈပတေး (kjàa sāp pǎ tée)

→ Shan: ၵျႃႇသပ်ႈပတေး (kjàa sāp pǎ tée)

/t͡ɕàθəpədə/

Learned borrowing from Sanskrit बृहस्पति (bṛhaspati, “Jupiter”), apparently with influence from a वाक्यस्पति (vākyaspati). Cognate with Mon ဗြဴဗတိ.


သောကြာ

→ Pa'o Karen: သောကျာꩻ

desc

→ Shan: သွၵ်ႉၵျႃႇ (sâ̰uk kjàa)

→ Shan: သွၵ်ႉၵျႃႇ (sâ̰uk kjàa)

Inherited from Old Burmese သောက္ကြာ (sokkra), a learned borrowing from Sanskrit शुक्र (śukra). Cognate with Mon သိုက်.


စနေ

→ Shan: ၸၼေႇ (tsǎ nèe)

→ Pa'o Karen: စနေႏ

Learned borrowing from Sanskrit शनि (śani, “Saturn”).


တက္ကသိုလ်

desc

Pa'o Karen: တက္ကသိုလ်ႏ

Pa'o Karen: တက္ကသိုလ်ႏ

→ Shan: တၵ်ႈၵသူဝ်ႇ (tāk kǎ sò)

→ Shan: တၵ်ႈၵသူဝ်ႇ (tāk kǎ sò) / တၵ်ႉၵသူဝ်ႇ (tâ̰k kǎ sò)

Taxila my:တက္ကသိုလ်

Borrowed from Pali Takkasilā, in reference to the historical center of learning at Taxila, located in modern-day Pakistan. Doublet of တက္ကသီလာ (takka.sila, “Taxila”).

doublet

university; institute of higher learning

(historical) In colonial times, a title for writers, artists, and photographers who had studied university. The title was used in front of their pen names.


ဇန်နဝါရီ

ၸၼ်ႇဝႃႇရီႇ (tsàn wàa rìi)


ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ

/pʰèpʰɔ̀wàɹì/

my:ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ


မတ်

brother-in-law, specifically younger sister's husband, or husband's younger brother


မတ်

Borrowed from Pali māsa, from Sanskrit माष (māṣa, “bean”).

a quarter of a monetary unit (e.g., kyat, dollar)

(historical) mat, a former Burmese coin equal to 25 pya (a quarter of a kyat)


မတ်

→ Shan: မၢတ်ႉ (mâ̰at)


ဧပြီ

Shan: ဢေႇပရႄႇ (ʼèe pǎ ràae)


မေ

Shan: မေႇ (mèe)


ဇွန်

Jasminum auriculatum
Jasminum auriculatum#Translingual

Jasminum auriculatum, a species of small fragrant white flower


ဇွန်

Shan: ၵျုၼ်ႇ (kjùn)


ဇူလိုင်

Shan: ၵျူႇလၢႆႇ (kjùu làai)


ဩဂုတ်

desc

Shan: ဢေႃးၵုတ်ႉ (ʼáu kṵ̂t)

Shan: ဢေႃးၵုတ်ႉ (ʼáu kṵ̂t)


စက်တင်ဘာ

သႅပ်ႇထႅမ်ႇပႃႇ

Shan: သႅပ်ႇထႅမ်ႇပႃႇ (sèp thèm pàa)

Shan: သႅပ်ႇထႅမ်ႇပႃႇ (sèp thèm pàa)


အောက်တိုဘာ

my-noun

အောက်တိုဘာ • (auktuibha)

desc

ဢွၵ်ႇတူဝ်ႇပိူဝ်

Shan: ဢွၵ်ႇတူဝ်ႇပိူဝ် (ʼàuk tò pǒe)

Shan: ဢွၵ်ႇတူဝ်ႇပိူဝ် (ʼàuk tò pǒe)

my:အောက်တိုဘာ


နိုဝင်ဘာ

ၼူဝ်ႇဝႅမ်ႇပိူဝ်ႇ

Shan: ၼူဝ်ႇဝႅမ်ႇပိူဝ်ႇ (nò wèm pòe)

Shan: ၼူဝ်ႇဝႅမ်ႇပိူဝ်ႇ (nò wèm pòe)


ဒီဇင်ဘာ

တီႇၸႅမ်ႇပိူဝ်ႇ

Shan: တီႇၸႅမ်ႇပိူဝ်ႇ (tìi tsèm pòe)

Shan: တီႇၸႅမ်ႇပိူဝ်ႇ (tìi tsèm pòe)


နေပြည်တော်

နေပြည် (ne-prany, “abode”) + -တော် (-tau, “royal”), "abode of kings"

affix

my:နေပြည်တော်

(historical) the city outside the royal palace walls


ကုလား

→ English: kalar

→ Shan: ၵလႃး (kǎ láa)

→ Khmer: កុឡា (kolaa), កូឡា (koulaa)

Borrowed from Pali kula (“clan; family; household”). Doublet of ကုလ (ku.la.).

bor+

Indians and persons of South Asian ancestry

(slang, ethnic slur, religious slur, offensive) a Bengali person; a Rohingya person; a Muslim, especially someone of South Asian origin.

(dated) Term used to describe all Westerners

ငှက်ပျော ငှက်ပျော#Burmese

(regional, Rakhine) (~ငှက်ပျော) Mysore banana, a local cultivar grown in Myanmar


မြင်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *k-m-raŋ ~ s-raŋ (“horse”).

inh

(chess) knight (both in Western chess and in Burmese chess, also known as sittuyin)


ဥ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ʔu (“egg; bird”), which is related to *wa ~ wu. Cognate with Old Chinese 嫗 (OC *qos, “to incubate, nurture; old woman”) (STEDT).


ပျား

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b(j/r)a. Cognate with Yao'an Lolopo bbiur (“bee”), Tibetan བྱ (bya, “bird”), Ersu bzɿ³³ ("honeybee"), Japhug pɣa (“bird”), Idu pɹɑ⁵⁵ ɑ⁵⁵ ("bird").


ငှက်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *s-ŋ(y)akᴴ (“bird”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋak (“idem”). Cognate with Old Chinese 鷁 (OC *ŋɡleːɡ, “a kind of aquatic bird”) (Hill 2019), 鶚 (OC *ŋaːɡ, “osprey”) (STEDT).


မူ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mow (“to work, move, do, make”), whence also အမှု (a.hmu., “case; deed”); see the latter for more (STEDT).


ကမ်းခြေ

ကမ်း (kam:, “shore”) + ခြေ (hkre, “leg; foot”).


ခွေး

Inherited from Old Burmese ခုယ်း (khuy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-kʷəj-n (“dog”). Compare Tibetan ཁྱི (khyi, “idem”), Old Chinese 犬 (OC *kʰʷeːnʔ, “idem”) (STEDT).


က

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ga³ ~ ʔga² (“to sing, dance, play”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ga (“to dance, leap, stride”); cognate with Old Chinese 歌 (OC *kaːl, “to sing”) and Tibetan གར (gar, “to dance”) (STEDT).


က

According to Hill (2019) (p. 32), cognate with Tibetan ཁལ (khal, “burden, load”), Old Chinese 荷 (OC *qʰaːls, *ɡaːl, *ɡaːlʔ, “to carry; load”).


င

name of the letter င, the fifth letter of the Myanmar alphabet


ည

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ja-n (“night”) (STEDT ńá "evening"); cognate with Mizo zân (“night”), Chinese 夜 (yè, “night”). Doublet of ညဉ့် (nyany.).


ဘ

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *pʷa (“man, father, husband, person”); cognate with Old Chinese 夫 (OC *pa, *ba, “husband, man”) (STEDT). Doublet of ဖ (hpa.).


မ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ma (“female, mother, principal part, feminine suffix”). STEDT compares the Tibeto-Burman with the pictographic form of Old Chinese 毋 (OC *ma, “not”), as well as implicitly 母 (OC *mɯʔ, “mother”), the latter from the possibly-related Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mow (“woman”). Luce gives 拇 (OC *mɯʔ, “thumb, big toe”) (in addition to Tibetan མོ (mo, “female”)) as a particularly close cognate, which appears to stem from *ma and is supported by Schuessler 2007. For a semantic parallel with partial cognacy from this root and syllable, note လက်မ (lakma., “thumb”).

မိန်းမ မိန်းမ#Burmese

Abbreviation of မိန်းမ (min:ma., “woman”).

center segment of a spokeless cartwheel where the hub is


စရိုက်

nature (inherent or acquired); character trait


ဂြိုဟ်

my-noun

ဂြိုဟ် • (gruih)

→ Shan: ၵျူဝ်ႇ (kjò)

Borrowed from Sanskrit ग्रह (graha, “planet”).


ကျွန်မ

From ကျွန် (kywan, “slave”) + -မ (-ma., “feminine”).


ရှင်

Contraction of အသျှင် (a.hsyang, “lord”)..

contraction of

အရှင် အရှင်#Burmese

(same as အရှင် (a.hrang)) master, lord, noble, powerful person, owner, proprietor

prefix to the name or title of a monk or noble


သူ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *su ~ s-lu (“who; indefinite pronoun; remote third-person pronoun”) (STEDT). Cognate with Tibetan སུ (su, “who”), as well as လူ (lu, “person”).


ဆရာ

→ Shan: သြႃႇ (sràa) / သရႃႇ (sǎ ràa)

→ Jingpho: shara

Inherited from Old Burmese ဆာရ်္ယာ, ultimately from Sanskrit आचार्य (ācārya) through some conflation with ဆာယာ (hcaya). Doublet of အာစရိယ (aca.ri.ya.).

ဆရာတင်
hca.ratang
Saya Tin

(honorific) respectful form of address used for teachers, as well as men in general

male practitioner of a particular art or trade


ဆရာမ

(honorific) respectful form of address used for female teachers


ကျောင်းသူ

From ကျောင်း (kyaung:, “school”) + -သူ (-su, “female resident, inhabitant, member”).

suffix

student (female), pupil (female), schoolgirl


ကျောင်းသား

→ Jingpho: jawng sa

From ကျောင်း (kyaung:, “school”) + -သား (-sa:, “male resident, inhabitant, or member of”).


သောက်

my-noun

သောက် • (sauk)

စောက် စောက်#Burmese

(euphemistic, swear word) Synonym of စောက် (cauk, “female genitalia, pussy”)


သောက်

သောက် • (sauk)


ဖတ်

residue left after pressing out oil or juice, etc.


သွား

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-wa (“to be in motion, go, come”), which appears to be the same as *s-wa-ŋ (“to go”). Cognate with Old Chinese 于 (OC *ɢʷa, “to proceed, go”) (STEDT). The "fornicate" sense is a semantic loan from Pali gacchati.
MED groups the "go" and "tooth" senses together, when they should be separated. It is unclear which sense the "be sharp" sense is related to.


သွား

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/p-wa (“tooth”). Cognate with Jingpho wa (“tooth”) and Tibetan སོ (so).


ဘုရား

my-noun

ဘုရား • (bhu.ra:) (classifier ဆူ or ပါး)

bhu.ra: (romanization)
ဆူ (classifier)
ပါး (classifier)

→ Pa'o Karen: ဖရာꩻ

Inherited from Old Burmese ဖုရာ (phurā), borrowed from Sanskrit वर पूजार्ह (vara pūjārha, “venerable enclosure”), though Sanskrit वर (vara) or Pali vara may be more likely. Likely cognate with Shan ၽြႃး (phráa) and Mon ပြဲ.

der

(Buddhism) pagoda, stupa, Buddhist temple

(honorific) royal and religious personages (e.g., the Buddha, kings, and monks)


ကျောင်း

→ Shan: ၵျွင်း (kjáung) / ၵျေႃင်း (kjáung)

→ Jingpho: jawng

→ S'gaw Karen: ကၠိ (kyoh)

→ Eastern Pwo: ကျံင်ႋ (kjōɴ)

Inherited from Old Burmese က္လောင်း (klong), itself from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *lɨ̆ŋ (“convent”).


ဘူတာရုံ

ဘူတာ (bhuta, “train station”) (of uncertain origin) + ရုံ (rum, “building”)


ပြတိုက်

ပြ (pra., “to show, display”) + တိုက် (tuik, “building”).


စာကြည့်တိုက်

/sàt͡ɕḭdaɪʔ/

စာကြည့် (ca-krany., “read silently”) + တိုက် (tuik, “brick building”).


ဆေးရုံ

→ Shan: သေးယူင်ႇ (sée yùung)

ဆေး (hce:, “medicine”) + ရုံ (rum, “building”).


ရုပ်ရှင်ရုံ

/joʊʔʃɪ̀ɴjòʊɴ/

ရုပ်ရှင် (ruphrang, “movie”) + ရုံ (rum, “building”).


ပါ

a throw resulting in two upturned cowries in a game of pachisi; a two


ပါ

Borrowed from Chinese [script needed] (ba).


လား

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *la (“donkey, ass, mule”); cognate with the first syllable of Jingpho [script needed] (lo³¹ kuŋ³³, “donkey”) (STEDT). Note also similarities to Old Chinese 驢 (OC *b·ra, “donkey”).


ဘူး

Inherited from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *pu (“pumpkin, gourd”). Cognate with Akha phù (“gourd”), as well as, outside of Lolo-Burmese, Old Chinese 匏 (OC *bruː, “gourd”), 瓢 (OC *bew, “gourd; dried gourd ladle”) (STEDT).
The "container" sense, though not linked to the "gourd" sense by STEDT (bu⁵⁵ "box / case"), appears to be derived from the "gourd" sense, as hollowed-out gourds can be used as containers and cases.

inh+

container; jar; tin; bottle; box with cover


ဒေါ်

my-noun

ဒေါ် • (dau)

ဒေါ် အောင် ဆန်း စု ကြည်
dau aung hcan: cu. krany
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

(honorific) Respectful form of address for older women; madam

ဒေါ်ဒေါ်

daudau, respectful form of address for older women


ဦး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-bu-s (“head”) (STEDT).

commencement, inception, onset, earlier part


တစ်

အတစ် အတစ်#Burmese

(same as အတစ် (a.tac)) chunk (of meat or preserved fish)


နှစ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ni(ː)ŋ ~ s-nik (“year; harvest”). Cognate with S'gaw Karen နံၣ် (neè).


လေး

Inherited from Old Burmese လိယ် (liy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d/s-ləy (“bow, slingshot”). Cognate with S'gaw Karen ချံၣ် (khleè, “bow”), Naxi leemei (“longbow”), Jingpho kung-li (“bow”), Old Chinese 矢 (OC *hliʔ, “arrow”) (STEDT).

(weaponry) bow (weapon used for shooting arrows)


ငါး

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ŋa², from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋja (“fish”). Cognate with Newar ङ (ṅa), Tibetan ཉ (nya), and Eastern Min 魚 /鱼 (ngṳ̀).


ဘာသာစကား

A compound of ဘာသာ (bhasa) + စကား (ca.ka:). Both elements mean ‘language’, but ဘာသာ (bhasa) is a loanword from Pali, while စကား (ca.ka:) is a native Burmese word.

language (system of communication using words or symbols)


ပေါက်တူး

my-noun

ပေါက်တူး • (pauktu:)

Borrowed from Mon ၜံက်တူ.
*ပေါက် (pauk) + တူး (tu:)


သုသာန်

desc

→ Shan: သုၵ်ႈသၢၼ်ႇ (sūk sàan)

→ Shan: သုၵ်ႈသၢၼ်ႇ (sūk sàan)

လူများသေသောအခါ၊ ထိုသူတို့၏ဆွေမျိုးတို့သည် ၎င်းအလောင်းတို့ကို သုသာန်မြေသို့ယူသွားပြီး မြေမြှုပ်လိုက်ကြသည်။ သို့မဟုတ် မီးသင်္ဂြိုဟ်လိုက်ကြသည်။

When people are dead, their relations carry the corpses to a cemetery and either bury or cremate them.


သင်္ချိုင်း

/θɪ̀ɴd͡ʑáɪɴ/


အပင်

အ (a., “nominal prefix”) + ပင် (pang, “plant”).

af

plant (organism capable of photosynthesis); tree

anything long such as hair, thread, post, etc.


ဘာသာဗေဒ

ဘာသာ (bhasa, “language”) + -ဗေဒ (-beda., “science”), from Pali bhāsā + veda, from Sanskrit भाषा (bhāṣā) + वेद (veda).


နေ

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔnəj¹/³, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-nəj (“sun; day”). Cognate with Old Chinese 日 (OC *njiɡ), Tibetan ཉི་མ (nyi ma).


စကား

ca.ka: (romanization)
ခွန်း (classifier)

Spelled in Old Burmese inscriptions alternatively as စာကား (caka:); as in ဤငါစာကာကိုဝ် လိုက်မူကာ (i-ngacakakuiw luikmuka, “If one follows these words of mine”).
Thus, according to U Phoh Lat, the first syllable စ (ca.) is a vowel-reduced version of စာ (ca, “word, letter”), as can be attested in several inscriptions such as the above.
The second syllable, ကား (ka:), is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ka (“word; speech; language”), which may be connected to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-k(w)a-j (“mouth, opening”); cognate with Tibetan བཀའ (bka') and Jingpho shăga (“speak”) (STEDT).
U Phoh Lat also considered the "shrill, chirping" sense of စာ (ca) and further compared it with Tibetan ཆ (cha, “voice, speech sound”), Tibetan ཅལ (cal, “noise”), Tibetan འཆད ('chad, “to speak”), Lisu shaq (“voice”) and Chinese 詞 /词 (cí, “word, phrase, speech”).

cog

language (system of communication using words or symbols), speech


စကား

စံကား စံကား#Burmese

Alternative form of စံကား (camka:, “champac”)


နိုင်ငံ

နိုင် (nuing, “to conquer, to domineer, to manage”) + ငံ (ngam, “to be complete, be replete with”).

af

တရုတ်နိုင်ငံ ― ta.rutnuingngam ― China

ရုရှားနိုင်ငံ ― ru.hra:nuingngam ― Russia

အိန္ဒိယနိုင်ငံ ― indi.ya.nuingngam ― India


ဘာသာ

bhasa (romanization)
ခု (classifier)
ရပ် (classifier)

Borrowed from Pali bhāsā, from Sanskrit भाषा (bhāṣā). The Burmese meaning of the term was extended to refer to religion or religious affiliation in the mid-1800s during British rule.


ကျပ်

a kind of basket carried by mendicants, ascetics and nuns


ကျပ်

တညင်းကျပ်

perforated leather used in weaving strips of cloth


ကျပ်

ကျပ်ခိုး (kyaphkui:, “soot”)

ကျပ်ခိုးစင် (kyaphkui:cang, “platform over a cooking place”)

ကျပ်ချွတ် (kyaphkywat, “(something) brand-new”)

ကျပ်တင် (kyaptang), ကျပ်တိုက် (kyaptuik, “to smoke (food)”)


ရုံ

Perhaps borrowed from Malay ruang (“tranquil part of a house; room”), and cognate with Mon ရိုၚ်, Thai โรง (roong), Khmer រោង (roong).

bor+

generic term for shelter, shed, building


ရုံ

Borrowed from Pali ārāma (“pleasure, park, monastery”). Contraction of အာရာမ (arama.).

မဟာဂန္ဓာရုံကျောင်းတိုက်

(Buddhism) used in the names of Buddhist monasteries


ဗုဒ္ဓ

Borrowed from Pali buddha or Sanskrit बुद्ध (buddha).

a Buddha who has the ability to intuitively know the four truths


ဓမ္မ

From Pali dhamma, from Sanskrit धर्म (dharma), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *dʰármas, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰérmos.


မြစ်

och-l

瀰 (OC *niːlʔ, *mnel, *mnelʔ, “overflowing rich water”)


မြစ်

ncog

Tibetan གྲོད་པ (grod pa, “first stomach”)

Tibetan བརྒྱུད (brgyud, “to transmit; descendants”)

ကြက်သည်းကြက်မြစ်

chicken liver and chicken gizzard (a traditional Burmese dish)


စာအုပ်

စာ (ca, “letter, writing”) + အုပ် (up, “to cover”).


နွေဦးပေါက်

my-noun

နွေဦးပေါက် • (nweu:pauk)

နွေ (nwe, “summer”) + ဦး (u:, “beginning”) + ပေါက် (pauk, “hatch, sprout”)


နွေရာသီ

နွေ (nwe, “summer”) + ရာသီ (rasi, “season”)


ဆောင်း

conical basket used in fishing (sometimes also used as a chicken coop)


ဆောင်း

cold season; winter (in temperate and polar regions)


လ

ပေယျာလ ပေယျာလ#Burmese

symbol for ellipsis (see also ပေယျာလ (peyyala.))


လ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/ɡ-la (“moon; month”). Cognate with Tibetan ཟླ་བ (zla ba), Nuosu ꆪ (hlep), Pa'o Karen လာ, S'gaw Karen လါ (lah), Western Pwo လၩ, Eastern Pwo လာ (là), Western Kayah ꤜꤢꤧ꤭ (lāe).

inh

ဆယ့်သုံးလပြက္ခဒိန်


ဝ

According to Hill 2019, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g/s-rwa (“taro, yam, tuber”); see Old Chinese 芋 (OC *ɢʷa, *ɢʷas, “taro”) for more.

Amorphophallus campanulata
Amorphophallus campanulata#Translingual

elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus campanulata)


အသည်း

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + သည်း (sany:, “liver”).

af

liver (large organ in the body; this organ used for food)


သည်းခြေ

သည်း (sany:, “liver”) + ခြေ (hkre, “bile”).


ချေး

Inherited from Old Burmese ခ္လိယ်း (hkliy), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *kləy, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kləj. Cognate with Tibetan ལྕི་བ (lci ba) and Chinese 屎. Compare ၶီႈ (khīi), ขี้ (kîi).


လျှာ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-laj ~ s-lej. Cognate with Tibetan ལྕེ (lce) and Chinese 舌 (shé).


နယ်

state (political division of a federation retaining a degree of autonomy)

(historical) part of a state, territory (administrative subdivision within a state)


နယ်

Borrowed from Sanskrit नायक (nāyaka, “leader, guide”).

bor+

(chess) pawn: the most common chess piece, or a similar piece in a similar game. In chess each side has eight; moves are only forward, and attacks are only forward diagonally or en passant.


ထောင်

→ Shan: ထွင်ႇ (thàung)

→ Mon: ထံၚ်


တူ

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m-(t/d)u (“nephew, descendant”). Cognate with Mizo tu (“nephew”), as well as Old Chinese 出 (OC *kʰljuds, *kʰljud) in the obscure sense of "nephew, descendant" as seen in the Erya (STEDT).


တူ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/m-t(w)a ~ *(t/d)u (“hammer, strike, slap”), provisionally set up by STEDT. Cognate with Tibetan ཐོ་བ (tho ba, “hammer”), Old Chinese 鍛 (OC *toːns, “to forge, refine”), 碓 (OC *tuːls, “pestle”).


တူ

Borrowed from Hokkien 箸 (tū). Compare Lü ᦏᦴᧈ (ṫhuu¹), Lao ຖູ່ (thū).

cog

Lü ᦏᦴᧈ (ṫhuu¹)


နို့

stud anchoring the traverse guy ropes on a dragon boat


နွား

my-noun

နွား • (nwa:) (classifier ကောင် or ရှဉ်း)

nwa: (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)
ရှဉ်း (classifier)

Inherited from Old Burmese နေား (no:), ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ŋwa (“cattle”).

cleat supporting the wall plate of a frame house


နှပ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-nap (“snot”). Cognate with နှာ (hna, “nose; errhine, snuff”) and with Tibetan སྣབས (snabs, “snot”).

snot, nasal mucus (mucous discharge from the nose)


ဝက်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *pʷak (“pig”) (STEDT)


ကြက်ဆင်

ကြက်ဆင် • (krakhcang) (classifier ကောင်)

krakhcang (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)

/t͡ɕɛʔsʰɪ̀ɴ/

ကြက် (krak, “fowl”) + ဆင် (hcang, “elephant”)


မိန်းမ

my-noun

မိန်းမ • (min:ma.) (classifier ယောက် or ဦး)

ma. (romanization)
ယောက် (classifier)
ဦး (classifier)

Inherited from Old Burmese မိယ်မ (miy ma). The first element is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-mi(j)-n (“people, man, human being”), which is cognate with Chinese 民 (mín, “people, men”), while the second element is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ma (“female, mother, principal part”) (STEDT), which appears connected to *mow (“woman”).
An outdated folk etymology claimed that the word was derived from မီးမာ (mi:ma, “burned scar”). Traditional Burmese-Buddhist origin myth says that proto-women got burned scars after they fell from celestial grace.


ယောက်ျား

my-noun

ယောက်ျား • (yaukya:) (classifier ယောက် or ဦး)

yaukya: (romanization)
ယောက် (classifier)
ဦး (classifier)

com+

compound of ယောက် (yauk, “classifier for people”)


လူ

From Old Burmese လော (lo), ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *su ~ s-lu (“who; indefinite pronoun; remote third-person pronoun”) (STEDT); see သူ (su, “who”) for more. An older theory by Luce tentatively connects Old Chinese 侶 (OC *raʔ, “companion”) to the Burmese, though the final in the Chinese seems problematic.
The "rise" sense is linked with the "man" sense by MED, though it is unclear if they should be linked.

inh

cɛʔhmɑ ə`yo luhmɑ ə`myo
conventional orthography:
ကြက်မှာ အရိုး လူမှာ အမျိုး။
krakhma a.rui: luhma a.myui:||

1962, Hla Pe, Burmese Proverbs, London: John Murray, p. 90 (translation on p 18)

With fowls, the pedigree; with men, breeding.


ကလေး

behaving in a way that is not worthy of dignity


လင်

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *b/m-laŋ, Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b/m-laŋ (“penis; male; husband”). Cognate with the second syllable of Jingpho [script needed] (ne³¹ laŋ³³, “penis”), Old Chinese 犅 (OC *klaːŋ, “bull, stud”); older comparisons to 郎 (OC *raːŋ, “husband, young man”) are improbable (see there for more) (STEDT).
The "complete" sense is grouped etymologically with the "husband" sense by MED, and isn't mentioned by STEDT or Luce 1981.


အမေ

→ Mon: အမေ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + မေ (me, “term of endearment for a female”).


အဖေ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ဖေ (hpe, “term to refer to a male”).


အမိ

From အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + မိ (mi., “mother”).

term of address for a woman as old as one's mother

term of address for a woman of the same age or younger than one


အဖ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ဖ (hpa., “masculine suffix”). Doublet of အဘ (a.bha.).


တိရစ္ဆာန်

my-noun

တိရစ္ဆာန် • (ti.rachcan) (classifier ကောင်)

ti.rachcan (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)

/təɹeɪʔsʰàɴ/

Borrowed from Pali tiracchāna, from Sanskrit तिरश्चीन (tiraścīna, “horizontal”) in reference to animals’ walking on all fours rather than upright.


သန်း

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s(y)ar (“louse”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (shɛ́-mɔ̀, “idem”) (STEDT).

tree from the bark of which a dye is obtained; Terminalia oliveri


မင်း

မောင် မောင်#Burmese

(honorific) a title used by Mon men in lieu of မောင် (maung).


မြွေ

Inherited from Old Burmese မြုယ် (mruy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-b/m-ruːl (“snake”). Cognate with Tibetan སྦྲུལ (sbrul) and Mandarin 虺 (huǐ).


ပျစ်

cog

Tibetan རྦད་རྦོད (rbad rbod, “thick, dense”)


ဘဲ

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *bay, from an areal Southeast Asian word; see Old Chinese 鴄 (OC *pʰid, “duck”) for more (STEDT).

duck (aquatic bird of the family Anatidae)


ဘဲ

great grandfather's great grandfather, six generations removed from oneself


ငန်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ŋa-n (“goose”); compare Cantonese 雁 (ngaan6, “wild goose”) and Tibetan ངང་པ (ngang pa, “goose, wild goose, duck, swan”) (STEDT).

goose (grazing waterfowl of the family Anatidae)


ငန်း

STEDT gives no etymology (ə-ŋân "allotment, quota"). Possibly an areal word and cognate with Thai งาน (ngaan) and Shan ငၢၼ်း (ngáan).


ငန်း

general name given to certain species of poisonous snakes


ငန်း

delirium accompanying certain kinds of fever


သေး

Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *g-ts(y)i-t/n (“urine; to urinate”); compare Tibetan གཅིན། (gcin, “urine”). Doublet of ဆီး (hci:) (STEDT).


နည်း

Traditionally considered (by Judson, MED, etc.) to be borrowed from Pali naya (“leading”); in this latter case, the word would be a doublet of နယ (na.ya.).
However, in light of a potential cognate in Lai [script needed] (niŋ, “way, method, custom”), which has similar phonetics and semantics, but which traditionally has had little to no contact with Indic civilization, the Pali derivation becomes less likely, as the words may stem from a Proto-Tibeto-Burman *niŋ (“way, method, custom”) (STEDT).

inh

way, system, method, process, procedure, ways, means


ပု

Borrowed from Pali pubbenivāsañāṇa and abbreviated.

wisdom which is able to discern the past


ပါး

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ba² (“cheek”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m/s-ba (“cheek, jaw, chin”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (bà, “cheek”) (STEDT).

cheek (soft skin on each side of the face, below the eyes)


တော

och-l

簇 (OC *sʰoːɡ, “to cluster (of foliage, etc.)”)


တုတ်

my-noun

တုတ် • (tut)


အသီး

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + သီး (si:, “fruit”).


သစ်သီး

သစ် (sac, “wood”) + အသီး (a.si:, “fruit”)

fruit (sweet part of a plant used as food)


အစေ့

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + စေ့ (ce., “seed”).


အရွက်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ရွက် (rwak, “leaf”).


အခေါက်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ခေါက် (hkauk, “tree bark”).


ပန်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *baːr (“to bloom; flower”), which is perhaps an areal word (compare Proto-Hmong-Mien *bi̯aŋ (“flower”)). Cognate with Tibetan [script needed] (ḥbar-ba, “to blossom”), Old Chinese 葩 (OC *pʰraː, “flower”), 疤 (OC *praː, “scar”) (STEDT). The "red, pink" sense is derived from how the color of many flowers is pink.

cog

my:ပန်း (သံတူကြောင်းကွဲ)

tails (of a coin) (as Burmese coins traditionally bear a floral design on the tails side)


ပန်း

ncog

Punjabi ਫੁਲਕਾਰੀ (phulkārī, “traditional Punjabi embroidery”)

my:ပန်း (သံတူကြောင်းကွဲ)

generic term for traditional arts and crafts: art


မြက်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-ljak ~ mrak ~ mruk.


သား

Inherited from Old Burmese သာဟ်, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tsa ~ za (“child”).


သား

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *sja-n (“meat”).


ညီ

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *nyey (“younger sibling”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (à-njí, “younger sibling”) (STEDT). Luce compares additionally Old Chinese 弟 (OC *diːlʔ, *diːls, “younger brother”) (though the initials don't seem to match).


အကို

Reduced pronunciation of အစ်ကို (ackui).


ညီမ

ညီ (nyi, “younger brother”) + -မ (-ma., “female”).


အမ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + မ (ma., “female”).

com

fruit-bearing tree or plant; female plant; pistillate plant


ကြိုး

မဟာဂီတ မဟာဂီတ#Burmese

(music) kyo, a genre of Burmese classical music; see မဟာဂီတ (ma.hagita.)


အရေ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ရေ (re, “skin”).

af

skin (outer covering of the body), hide, pelt


အသား

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + သား (sa:, “meat”).


သွေး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-hjwəj-t. Cognate with Chinese 血 (xuè) and Nuosu ꌦ (sy).

blood (vital liquid flowing in animal bodies)


အရိုး

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ရိုး (rui:, “bone”).

affix

1962, Hla Pe, Burmese Proverbs, London: John Murray, pp. 18 and 90

that which is simple, plain, honest, natural, unaffected


အမြီး

အ (a.) + မြီး (mri:), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-maj ~ m-raj.


အတောင်

feather (branching, hair-like structure that grows on the wings of birds)


ဒူးရင်းသီး

my-noun

ဒူးရင်းသီး • (du:rang:si:) (classifier လုံး)

rang:si: (romanization)
လုံး (classifier)

ဒူးရင်း (du:rang:, “durian”) + အသီး (a.si:, “fruit”).


ဆံပင်

hcampang (romanization)
ပင် (classifier)

ဆံ (hcam, “hair”) + ပင် (pang, classifier for long strands).

com

hair (pigmented keratinaceous growth on the human head)


အမွေး

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + မွေး (mwe:, “hair, fur”).

af

hair (the collection or mass of filaments growing from the skin of humans and animals)


ခေါင်း

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-kawŋ (“hollow, hollow object, head”); cognate with Lahu [script needed] (qo¹¹, “cave, hole”). Said Tibeto-Burman root is allofamically related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(g/k)uŋ (“hole; orifice; inner part”), whence Old Chinese 空 (OC *kʰoːŋ, *kʰoːŋs, “empty; space”); see there for more cognates (STEDT).


ခေါင်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(g/k)uŋ (“hole; orifice; inner part”), and thus related to Etymology 1 (STEDT).

အခေါင်း အခေါင်း#Burmese


နား

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r/g-na (“ear; to hear”) (STEDT).


နားရွက်

ear (external part of the organ of hearing), outer ear, auricle, pinna


မျက်စိ

The first syllable is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-mjak ~ s-mik (“eye”) (whence Old Chinese 目 (OC *muɡ, “idem”)) (STEDT).


နှာခေါင်း

နှာ (hna, “nose”) + ခေါင်း (hkaung:, “head”)


ပါးစပ်

mouth (opening of an animal through which food is ingested)


လက်သည်း

လက် (lak, “hand”) + သည်း (sany:, “strong”)


ခြေ

Inherited from Old Burmese ခြိယ် (khriy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *krəj (“foot, footstool”).


တောင်

my-noun

တောင် • (taung) (classifier လုံး or တောင်)

taung (romanization)
လုံး (classifier)
တောင် (classifier)

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m/r-duŋ (“mountain, hillock”), and cognate with Old Chinese 冢 (OC *toŋʔ, “mound, peak; great”) (STEDT).


တောင်

According to Hill, a semantic extension of Etymology 1, thus "direction of the mountains" > "south"; the proto-Burmish peoples spread from what is now Yunnan southwards, and the Naga Hills and Hengduan Mountains, which form the northern periphery of modern-day Burma, would have been located in the proto-Burmish south.


တောင်

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *dwaŋ (“cubit”) (STEDT: ʔə toŋ "cubit"), a semantic extension of Proto-Tibeto-Burman *dwaŋ (“wing, hand”) (whence the first syllable of တောင်ပံ (taungpam, “wing”)). Cognate with Mizo tong (“cubit”).

cog

ပိတ် နှစ်တောင်


တောင်

For the "wing" sense, from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *dwaŋ (“wing, hand”) , whence Akha [script needed] (dáŋ, “wing”) (STEDT).


လွတ်လပ်ခွင့်

/lʊʔlaʔkʰwɪ̰ɴ/

လွတ်လပ် (lwatlap, “be free”) + ခွင့် (hkwang., “a right”)

af

freedom (not being imprisoned or enslaved), the right to be free


အိပ်ရာ

my-noun

အိပ်ရာ • (ip-ra)


လက်

Inherited from Old Burmese လက် (lak), ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *lak (“hand”). Cognate with Tibetan ལག (lag, “hand, arm”) and Nuosu ꇇ (lot, “hand”) (STEDT).

arm; narrow projecting part of a main body


တို့

တင်း တင်း#Burmese

unit of dry measure equal to four တင်း (tang:)

တင်း တင်း#Burmese


ဘယ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b(w)ay (“left”), widely attested in Tibeto-Burman languages; compare Naxi wai (“id”). Said root is co-allofamic with Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(p/b)aːy (“lame, limp, askew”); more distant cognates from this latter root include perhaps Old Chinese 跛 (OC *prals, *paːlʔ, “to walk lame”), 頗 (OC *pʰaːl, *pʰaːlʔ, *pʰaːls, “slanting, oblique, perverse”), 坡 (OC *pʰaːl), 陂 (OC *pral, *prals, “riverbank, dike”), 詖 (OC *pral, *prals, “biased, insincere”) (STEDT).


မြေ

Inherited from Old Burmese မ္လိယ် (mliy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mlij, *m-l(e/ə)j (“earth, country, ground, mud, soil”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (mí, “earth”), Old Chinese 地 (OC *l'els, “ground, earth”) (STEDT, Hill 2019). The traditional comparison with Old Chinese 室 (OC *hliɡ, “room, dwelling”) is phonetically unconvincing, based on Old Chinese reconstructions.

inh+

မြေ နှစ်ဧက

land (ground that is suitable for farming), region


အက်

အက်ဥပဒေ အက်ဥပဒေ#Burmese

(same as အက်ဥပဒေ (ak-u.pa.de)) act, legislation


လုံချည်

lumhkyany (romanization)
ထည် (classifier)

→ English: longyi

Phono-semantic matching of Hindi लुंगी (luṅgī). လုံ (lum, “to be covered”) + ချည် (hkyany, “to tie”).


ပြား

Related to Old Chinese 披 (OC *pʰral, *pʰralʔ, “to divide, scatter”) (Hill 2019, p. 32).
The "swamp, forest" sense is grouped with the "spread out" sense by MED, perhaps interpreted as "spread-out collection of trees".


ပြား

Related to Old Chinese 板 (OC *praːnʔ, “plank, board”) (and thus also 版 (OC *praːnʔ, “plank, printing block”)) (Hill 2019, p. 224).

pya (coin equal to one hundredth of a kyat)


ဇာတ်

my-noun

ဇာတ် • (jat)

→ Shan: ၸၢတ်ႈ (tsāat)

From Pali jātaka, from Sanskrit जातक (jātaka).

zat: a kind of Burmese dramatic performance including music and dance


ဇာတ်

ဇာတ် • (jat)

→ Shan: ၸၢတ်ႈ (tsāat)


ခြေထောက်

ခြေ (hkre, “foot”) + ထောက် (htauk, “to support”).


ပေါင်

The "thigh" sense is from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *(p/b)waŋ (“hips, buttocks, tail, anus”), and cognate with Tibetan ཕོངས (phongs, “buttock”) (STEDT). Luce adduces no further possible cognates for the "thigh" sense.
The "add, attach" and "pawn, mortgage" senses are linked with the "thigh" sense by MED (perhaps as "thighs" are an "attachment" to the body), but apparently separated by STEDT and given no etymology (poŋ "superadd lengthwise; attach to the side of", "pawn, mortgage"). Luce combines the "add" and "pawn" meanings together etymologically (perhaps via semantic association of "putting side-by-side (attaching)" with "pawning items that are juxtaposed"), though adduces no cognates.


ပေါင်

pound (unit of mass/weight; unit of currency/money)


ဒူး

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *du-k (“elbow, knee”); cognate with Galo [Term?] (a du, “forearm span”), Akha [script needed] (kuiˇ du, “lower leg from knee down”) (STEDT).


ဒူးခေါင်း

ဒူး (du:, “knee”) + ခေါင်း (hkaung:, “head”)


တောင်ပံ

From တောင် (taung, “wing”) + an element of unclear interpretation and origin ပံ (pam).

wing (of a flying animal, like a bird; of an airplane)


ဗိုက်

my-noun

ဗိုက် • (buik)

According to STEDT, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-puːk (“belly; vitals; hollow object; cave”), whence Old Chinese 腹 (OC *puɡ, “belly, abdomen”). However, the -uik final suggests a borrowing from Mon; as noted on the page for the Chinese term, similar words exist in Mon-Khmer, suggesting an areal relation or a very deep inheritance past the point of reconstructability.

inh

ဗိုက်နာတယ်


အူ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *wu (“belly; stomach; intestine; kidney”). Cognate with Nuosu ꃶ (vu), Tangut 𗎨 (*wju², “intestines”).


ရင်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b/g-raŋ. Cognate with Tibetan བྲང (brang, “chest, breast”), Old Chinese 膺 (OC *qɯŋ, “idem”).


ရင်ပတ်

ရင်ဘတ် ရင်ဘတ်#Burmese

Alternative spelling of ရင်ဘတ် (rangbhat)


နှလုံး

Likely from an earlier unattested form *နှစ်လုံး (*hnaclum:), from the same နှစ် (hnac) found in အနှစ် (a.hnac, “substance, yolk”) (ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/k-nik (“heart, mind”)), + လုံး (lum:, “round object”) (STEDT: hnə lûm ( < hnac-lûm) "heart").


ကိုက်

my-noun

ကိုက် • (kuik)

According to STEDT, from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *kuːk ~ *kawk (“to shear, strip, pare”), which may be related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/r-kawk ~ *s/r-kwak (“outer covering, skin, bark, rind”), for which see ခေါက် (hkauk, “tree bark”). Close cognates from the former root include Garo [script needed] (kik, “to strip”) (STEDT).
That said, as a word with a final -uik, a borrowing from Mon is also possible; compare Mon သ္ကိတ်.

cog

clamp (portable vice-like device for holding things together)

cross-beam bearing against a pair of longitudinal boards lining a sailboat


ကိုက်

head

ကိုက် • (kuik)

Borrowed from Hindi गज़ (gaz), from Classical Persian گز (gaz).


ထွေး

→ Shan: ထူၺ်း (thói)

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *(t/d)oy (“younger sibling”).


အန်

The "strength" sense is derived from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *ʔan (“strength”), whence also Jingpho [script needed] (ʔàn, “in full strength”). The Tibeto-Burman root bears strong resemblance to Proto-Tibeto-Burman *k/l/ʔ-wan (“swift, strong, violent”) (whence the second syllable of Jingpho [script needed] (ǹ-gùn, “strength”); Old Chinese 拳 (OC *ɡron, “force; fist”), though connected by STEDT, is probably not related), and may be allofamic with it (STEDT).
The "dice" sense is not given etymology by STEDT (an "die"), and not mentioned by Luce 1981. MED groups "dice" with "strength" (as well as "vomit"), though it is unclear if it is related to either term.

cog

အန်ချင်း အန်ချင်း#Burmese

(same as အန်ချင်း (anhkyang:)) a type of song sung by raftmen; a song chanted when throwing dice


ကြား

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔ-gla² (“between; to have a space between; interval”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *gla (“interval, space between”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (khà, “in between”) (STEDT); outside of Lolo-Burmese, compare Old Chinese 間 (OC *kreːn, *kreːns, “section, between, interval (of time and/or space)”). Hill (2019) (p. 251) adduces 加 (OC *kraːl, “to add”), Tibetan བཀྲལ (bkral, “to appoint”), and ཁྲལ (khral, “tax”) as phonetically-sound cognates.


ထင်

Borrowed from Chinese [script needed] (tian).


သေ

Inherited from Old Burmese သိယ် (siy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *səj (“to die”). Compare Chinese 死 (sǐ), Dzongkha ཤི (shi).
The "stable" and "wine" senses are grouped with the "die" sense by MED, perhaps as "dying" is a form of "stability (no action)"; for a semantic parallel, compare English die down.


ခွဲ

Causative of ကွဲ (kwai:). The "half" sense is from a semantic development "divide" > "of a divided portion" > "half".

a traditional Burmese unit of volume equivalent to 2+¹⁄₄ imperial pecks or approximately 20.4574 liters


နဂါး

na.ga: (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)

→ Shan: ၼၵႃး (nǎ káa)

Borrowed from Pali nāga, from Sanskrit नाग (nāgá).


ကုတ်

head

ကုတ် • (kut)


ကုတ်

ကုတ် • (kut)


ရပ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-r(j)ap. Cognate with Cantonese 立 (laap⁶), Dzongkha ཞབས (zhabs, “leg, foot”), Jingpho tsap (“stand”), Nuosu ꉆ (hxit, “stand, stand up”), Lisu ꓦꓰꓼ (h̃è̱, “stand, stand up, stand straight”).


ချိုး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-k(r)əw (“dove, pigeon”). Cognate with Old Chinese 鳩 (OC *ku, “idem”); see there for more (STEDT: khyuì "pigeon").


ချိုး

fur (carbonate of lime formed at the bottom of a kettle)


ဆေး

hce: (romanization)
မည် (classifier)
လုံး (classifier)

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-tsəj (“medicine; juice; paint”). Compare Nuosu ꋌ (cy) (as in ꁬꋌ (bbut cy)), Lolopo naxcir (“medicine”), Naxi cher'ee (“medicine”), Tibetan རྩི (rtsi), Old Chinese 漆 (OC *sʰiɡ, “lacquer, paint”).

medicine (substance which promotes healing)


သုတ်

my-noun

သုတ် • (sut)

→ Shan: သုၵ်ႈ (sūk)

From Pali sutta. Doublet of သုတ္တ (sutta.).

(Buddhism) complete series of the Buddha's discourses constituting the Sutta Pitaka

(Buddhism) discourse delivered by the Buddha


ဆွဲ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(d/n)waj (“to hang from, cling to; creeper”), though the exact morphology of the initial is unclear; see တွဲ (twai:, “to link; drooping, hanging”) for more (Hill 2019).

der

ဆွဲချိန်ခွင် ဆွဲချိန်ခွင်#Burmese

(see also ဆွဲချိန်ခွင် (hcwai:hkyinhkwang)) a large pair of scales with a capacity of 25 viss


ပြော

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

nonlemma

ဗြော ဗြော#Burmese

Alternative form of ဗြော (brau:, “a kind of long drum; an instrumental based on said drum”)


ရက်

Inherited from Old Burmese ရျက် (ryak) (Bagan), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-r(j)ak (“day, full day; overnight”) (STEDT). Cognate with Mizo riak, riah (“to spend the night”), Tibetan ཞག (zhag, “day (24 hours)”), Nuosu ꉖ (hxot, “night”, classifier), Lisu ꓦꓬꓼ (h̃jɑ̱̀, “night”, classifier), and Chinese 夜 (OC *laːɡs, “night”).


ရက်

Inherited from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-rjak (“oil, fat, grease”). Cognate with Mizo (sa) hriak (“oil, grease”), Tibetan ཞག (zhag, “oil, fat, grease”), and Chinese 液 (OC *laːɡ, “liquid, fluid”). Alternatively, from အရက် (a.rak, “alcoholic drinks, liquor”), from Arabic عَرَق (ʕaraq, “arrack, arak, an alcoholic drink”).


ဝံ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-wam (“bear”). Cognate with Cantonese 熊 (hung4) and Tibetan དོམ (dom).


ဝက်ဝံ

wak-wam (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)


သင်္ဘော

Possibly an Indo-Aryan loanword; compare Sanskrit पोत (pota, “ship”) and सपोत (sapota, “having a ship”). This same word is likely also reflected in Thai สำเภา (sǎm-pao), Lao ສຳເພົາ (sam phao) or ສະເພົາ (sa phao), Khmer សំពៅ (sɑmpɨw),
The "papaya" sense is perhaps because a cut papaya resembles a boat, and the "foreign" sense from foreign traders arriving by boat.

Meronym: သင်္ဘောသီး (sangbhau:si:)

Carica papaya
Carica papaya#Translingual


ကြယ်

Cognate with Yao'an Lolopo gie (“star”), Naxi geeq (“star”), Japhug ʑŋgri (“star”).


ရေ

Inherited from Old Burmese ရိယ် (riy), from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *rəj¹ (“water”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *rəj (“water; liquid; body fluid”). Cognate with Pela ɣəi⁵⁵, Tangut 𗋽 (*zjɨ̱r²), and Tshangla ri¹³ (STEDT).

inh

ရေ နှစ်ခွက်


ရေ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-k-rəj (“skin”). Cognate with Tibetan སྐྱི (skyi, “outer skin”) (STEDT), as well as, according to Luce, Old Chinese 肌 (OC *kril, “skin; muscle”). STEDT also compares 介 (OC *kreːds, “shell; to lie between”).


မိုး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-məw (“sky, clouds, fog”). Doublet of မြူ (mru, “fog”).
The "roof, hold over, tower" senses are considered equivalent to the "sky" sense by MED, but possibly different by STEDT (amui: "roof"). They appear to be semantic extensions from "sky" > "what lies above" > "roof, hold over".


အင်း

Unknown. Shared lexeme across several languages in mainland Southeast Asia, including Mon အၚ်, Thai แอ่ง (ɛ̀ng).

a pond, lake, or creek where fishing by means of putting up weirs, damming, and bailing out water is carried out


အင်း

cabalistic square or sign composed of mystic figures and characters in a grid


ပင်လယ်

→ Shan: ပၢင်ႇလၢႆႇ (pàang làai)

→ Jingpho: pang lai

→ Khumi Chin: pangle

Apparently an areal word of Mon-Khmer origin; see Chinese 蓬萊／蓬莱 (pénglái, “Penglai”) for more.

(figuratively) anything of great magnitude


အဏ္ဏဝါ

Learned borrowing from Pali aṇṇava, from Sanskrit अर्णव (arṇava, “foamy (sea)”).


သမုဒ္ဒရာ

/θəmoʊʔdəjà/

/θəmoʊʔdəjà/

Learned borrowing from Sanskrit समुद्र (samudra).


ဆား

Inherited from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tsa (“salt”). Cognate with Nuosu ꋂ (ce), Tibetan ཚྭ (tshwa), and Old Chinese 鹺 (OC *zlaːl) (STEDT).

inh+

သင်္ဘောဆား


ကျောက်

my-noun

ကျောက် • (kyauk)

Inherited from Old Burmese က္လောက် (klok), from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *k-lok ~ k-loŋ (“stone”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-lu(ŋ/k) (“stone”). Perhaps cognate with Old Chinese 玉 (OC *ŋoɡ, “jade”) (STEDT).

inh

stone, rock, flint (hard earthen substance)

(medicine) calculus, gallstone, kidney stone


ကျောက်

my-noun

ကျောက် • (kyauk)

contagious disease
(in particular) smallpox, chickenpox


ကျောက်

ကျောက် • (kyauk)

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *gyukᴸ ~ džukᴸ (“waist”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *gyu-k ~ dzyu-k (“idem”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (jo˰, “waist”) (STEDT).


သဲ

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *say² (“sand”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(s/z)a-j (“earth, sand, soil”). Compare Old Chinese 沙 (OC *sraːl, *sraːls, “sand”).
Proto-Tai *zwɯəjᴬ (“sand”), whence Thai ทราย (saai), Lao ຊາຍ (sāi) and Zhuang saiz, was probably borrowed from Proto-Sino-Tibetan or one of its descendants.


ဖုန်

Borrowed from Middle Chinese 粉 (MC pjunX). Cognate with Thai ฝุ่น (fùn), Lao ຝຸ່ນ (fun), Tai Dam ꪄꪴ꪿ꪙ, Shan ၽုၼ်ႇ (phùn).


တိမ်

my-noun

တိမ် • (tim)

cloud (visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air)


မြူ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *muːŋ ~ r/s-muːk (“sky, clouds, fog”). Doublet of မိုး (mui:, “sky; rain”).

inh

fog (cloud that forms at a low altitude and obscures vision)


မြူ

Chenopodium album
Chenopodium album#Translingual


လေ

Inherited from Old Burmese လိယ်, from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *s/ʔ-ləy¹, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-ləj (“wind”). Cognate with Rakhine လီ.

(of speaking, singing, or writing) style of delivery, tone


ရေခဲ

ရေ (re, “water”) + ခဲ (hkai:, “to congeal”).


မီး

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *s/ʔ-mej² (“fire”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mej (“fire”). Cognate with Tibetan མེ (me).


ပြာ

cog

Western Kayah [script needed] (phe¹¹, “ashes, fireplace”)


လမ်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *lam (“road, path”). Cognate with Tibetan ལམ (lam).


ဝါ

Cognate with Lashi [script needed] (-ˀu, “cotton”) (Hill 2019, p. 68) with further origin uncertain. Not given etymology by STEDT (wa "cotton"), while Luce adduces Tibetan བལ (bal, “wool”) as a cognate. Note also similarities to Vietnamese vải (“cloth, fabric”).


ဝါ

Borrowed from Sanskrit वर्ष (varṣa, “rain; year”).

bor+

period of monsoon retreat for Buddhist monks; Buddhist lent


ဝါ

Borrowed from Sanskrit वार (vāra, “moment, occasion”).

(day or night) religious lesson given to monks


ဝါ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b/s-wa (“white; yellow; bright”), which is part of a complex word family with many allofams. More distant cognates from the allofam *hwaŋ (“shine, bright, yellow”) include ဝင်း (wang:, “bright”) and Old Chinese 黃 (OC *ɡʷaːŋ, “yellow”) (STEDT).


ဖြူ

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔ-blu¹ (“porcupine”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-blu (“porcupine, hedgehog”). Cognate with the second syllable of Manipuri ꯁꯕꯨ (saboo, “porcupine”) (STEDT).

Indian crested porcupine, Indian porcupine (Hystrix indica, syn. H. leucura)

Asiatic brush-tailed porcupine (Atherurus macrourus)


နေ့

Inherited from Old Burmese နိယ့် (niy'),
from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔnəj¹/³, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-nəj (“sun; day”). By synchronic analysis, a creaky-tone variant of နေ (ne, “sun”).


ပူ

ပူတာ ပူတာ#Burmese

(same as ပူတာ (puta)) cylindrical container with a lid


ပြည့်

ပြည် ပြည်#Burmese

attributive form of ပြည် (prany, “country”)


သစ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *siŋ ~ sik (“tree, wood”); compare Mandarin 薪 (xīn, “wood”) and Cantonese 薪 (san1, “wood”).


သစ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-zik (“leopard”). Cognate with Zhaba ʑe⁵⁵ mei⁵⁵ (“leopard/panther”)


လုံး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-lu(ŋ/m) (“heart; round”). Cognate with Drung tvleum (“round”), Jingpho lum (“round”) and Tibetan ཟླུམ (zlum, “round; spherical”).

word suffixed to some nouns to denote wholeness or roundness


မှန်

→ Shan: မၢၼ်ႇ (màan)


ညာ

Probably from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-(j/r)a (“right (hand)”). See also ယာ (ya, “right (direction)”), Old Chinese 右 (OC *ɢʷɯʔ, *ɢʷɯs, “idem”) (STEDT).


အမည်

အ- (a.-) + မည် (many), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-miŋ (“name”). Cognate with Tibetan མིང (ming) and Chinese 名 (míng).


ကြောင်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *k-roŋ¹ (“cat, wildcat”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-rwaŋ (“cat, wildcat; tiger”).


ပခုံး

Compound from *ပ (*pa.) (from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ba (“to carry (on back); shoulder”) or *p(r)ak ~ r-pak (“shoulder”), likely ပိုး (pui:, “to carry on back”)) and ခုံး (hkum:, “arched, convex”).


ပိုး

Inherited from Old Burmese ပိုဝ်း (puiw), from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *bəw² (“insect, vermin, bug, snake”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *bəw (“insect, snake, vermin, bug”). Cognate with Old Chinese 蜉 (OC *bu, “mayfly”); see there for more (STEDT).

inh

silk yarn (fine, soft cloth woven from silk fibers)


ပိုး

Pwo (one of the Kayin dialects and the people who speak it as their mother tongue)


ဘဏ်

Borrowed from English bank, transcribed with a retroflex nasal ဏ (na.) to conform to ဘဏ္ဍာ (bhanda, “property, finances”).


တံတား

cog

tsam⁵⁵ thɔ̃⁵⁵

tsam³¹ thɔ̃³¹

der

Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m-dzam (“bridge, ladder”)

och-l

堤 (OC *teː, *teːʔ, *dje, “dike, embankment”)


မြို့

禦 (OC *ŋaʔ, *ŋas, “to withstand, defend”)

a wall surrounding an area; a stockade
walled town with a marketplace


ကျား

Inherited from Old Burmese က္လာ (kla), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *k-la (“tiger”), ultimately from Proto-Mon-Khmer *klaʔ (“idem”).

ကျားလိုက်တုတ်ခုတ်

being forced to respond to a situation without due preparation

ကျားမြီးဆွဲမိ

to be in a fix, be committed without a chance of retraction


ကျား

Likely a semantic extension of the "variegated" sense of Etymology 2, considering the checkered pattern of the draughts game board (though MED separates the "draughts" and "variegated" senses); for a semantic parallel, note the extension of English checker from the board game to its characteristic alternating square pattern.


ကျား

ကျားမော့

a strut placed diagonally between the ridge-pole and horizontal member joining the tie-beams

a transverse stay in the roof of a building

a prop or stay applied to the side of a house, boat or ship; a buttress


ကျား

Contraction of ယောက်ျား (“a male person”); see there for more discussion.

ယောက်ျား ယောက်ျား#Burmese

abbreviation of ယောက်ျား (“a male person; a gent”)


မျောက်

my-noun

မျောက် • (myauk)

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m(j/r)uk (“monkey”).


ကြံ့

kram. (romanization)
ချောင်း (classifier)

Compare Thai จั่น (jàn, “a kind of trap”).

(archaic) any of the four rafters forming a pavilion-roof


ဒေါင်း

daung: (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m-dwaŋ (“peacock”); cognate with Tibetan མདོངས (mdongs, “eye in a peacock's feathers”) (STEDT). STEDT also adduces Old Chinese 孔 (OC *kʰloːŋʔ, “peacock”) as a cognate, though the initial in the Chinese form is problematic and better matches Austroasiatic forms; perhaps the word is areal across Southeast Asia.


ပရိဘောဂ

/pəɹḭbɔ́ɡa̰/

Borrowed from Pali paribhoga (“material for enjoyment”), from Sanskrit परिभोग (paribhoga, “enjoyment”).


ဆွမ်း

Shan: သွမ်း (sáum)

och-l

餞 (OC *zlenʔ, *zlens, “to give a farewell party; to preserve fruits in honey or syrup”)

(Buddhism) food offered to the Buddha or to monks


ဇွန်း

→ Jingpho: zun

Unknown. Shared lexeme across several languages in mainland Southeast Asia, including Mon ဇန် (còn, “spoon”), Thai ช้อน (chɔ́ɔn, “spoon”).

spoon (scooped utensil for eating or serving)

ဇွန်းခြစ်အုန်း

coconut whose kernel is still soft enough to be scooped up with a spoon


ထူး

→ Shan: ထူး (thúu, “fetters”)

fetters (esp. for elephants) (chain used to bind a person or animal by the legs)


ဘီး

Derived by STEDT from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔ-gʷəy² (“comb”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *ʔ-gʷəy-s (“comb (for hair)”), and compared with Mizo [Term?] (khuih, “comb”). Note also more overt similarities to Old Chinese 篦 (OC *piː, *bis, “fine-tooth comb”).

inh

comb (toothed implement for grooming the hair)


ဘီး

The closest possible cognate is Lhao Vo pyi" (“wheel-belt”).

wheel (circular device facilitating movement or transportation)


နှမ်း

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *(s/ʔ)-nam² (“sesame”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-nam (“idem”); cognate with Akha [script needed] (nm̀, “idem”) (STEDT). Note also Proto-Hmong *hnaŋᴮ (“perilla”), whence White Hmong hnav (“perilla, sesame”).

Sesamum indicum
Sesamum indicum#Translingual

a traditional Burmese unit of length equal to 0.03125 inches (0.79375 mm)


လှေ

Inherited from Old Burmese လှိယ် (lhiy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Cognate with Jingpho li (“boat”), Naxi leeq, S'gaw Karen ချံ (khlee). Compare Middle Chinese 䑴艃 (“a boat, a ship, vessel”).


အုတ်

Borrowed from Pali iṭṭhakā, from Sanskrit इष्टका (iṣṭakā).

brick (hardened block used for building)


စကားပြန်

စကား (ca.ka:, “speech”) + ပြန် (pran, “to translate”).

af

interpreter (one who interprets speech in another language)


စားစရာ

စား (ca:, “eat”) + စရာ (ca.ra, “verbal noun suffix”).

com

food (any substance consumed by living organisms to sustain life)


ထီ

Possibly corrupted from English lottery.


ထီး

→ Shan: ထီး (thíi)

och-l

提 (OC *deː, *dje, “to raise, put forward”)

a parasol which forms a part of the royal regalia

a parasol designated and bestowed by the monarch on courtiers, governors, etc. as insignia of rank

miniature paper umbrella used as offertory

tiered and ornamented finial of a pagoda


ဆူး

thorn (sharp protective spine of a plant)


ဝမ်း

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *pʷam (“belly, stomach, waist”), which appears to be related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-bʷam ~ s-bʷap (“to swell; swollen, fat, thick; rounded part, mountain, hill”) (STEDT). Cognate with Jingpho [script needed] (pù-hpam, “stomach”), as well as, according to Luce, Old Chinese 範 (OC *bomʔ, “mold; pattern”); a more distant cognate from *s-bʷa(m/p) is Old Chinese 胖 (OC *pʰaːns, “fat (adjective)”).


ရွှံ့

mud (mixture of water and soil or fine grained sediment)


ဝတ်

According to STEDT (wat-rak "juice of flowers"), from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *s-watᴴ (“to bloom; flower”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *b/s-wat (“flower”). Cognate with Lahu [script needed] (vêʔ, “flower”).


စိန်

my-noun

စိန် • (cin)

→ Shan: ၸိင်ႇ (tsìng)


စိန်

စိန် • (cin)

→ Mon: စိန်

→ Thai: เสน (sěen)

Possibly from Sanskrit चीन (cīna, “lead”) or Pali cīna (“lead”).


စိမ့်

စိမ့် • (cim.)

Not given etymology by STEDT (cimʼ "transude, ooze through"). According to Luce, related to Old Chinese 浸 (OC *ʔsims, *sʰim, “to soak, immerse”), Tibetan ཇིམ་པ་ (jim pa, “mud”); the Chinese comparison is supported by Schuessler 2007. Compare Mon ဇီု (“marsh, swamp”).


စိတ်

my-noun

စိတ် • (cit)

Borrowed from Pali citta (“mind, heart”). Cognate with Mon စိုတ်.

bor+

mind (ability for rational thought), thought, consciousness, heart


စိတ်

my-noun

စိတ် • (cit)

a traditional Burmese unit of volume equivalent to 2¼ imperial gallons or approximately 10.2287 liters


ပို

deep bamboo basket for storing or transporting dry goods


ပို

a measure of length equivalent to five and half yards


ပို

timber planking connecting two boats lined abreast over which a deck is laid


ကူလီ

Borrowed from Hindi क़ुली (qulī, “laborer”), from Turkish köle (“slave”).


ပန်းသီး

ပန်း (pan:, “pink, red”) + သီး (si:, “fruit”).


ကြက်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *k-rak (“chicken, fowl”), which appears to be onomatopoeic (compare English cluck). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (ya, “idem”).


ဆင်

Luce compares the word to Old Chinese 匠 (OC *sbaŋs, “artisan”), based on a reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation *dzyaŋ; however, newer reconstructions of the Old Chinese pronunciation as *s.baŋ-s make this doubtful (though said reconstructions seem to be still under debate). See also Khmer ចាំង (cang, “to cut, chisel”).
The "design, pattern" and "resemble" senses are grouped with the "adorn, decorate" sense by MED, which appears semantically reasonable.


ဆင်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *tsaŋ (“elephant”), apparently borrowed from Proto-Tai *ɟaːŋꟲ, ultimately from Middle Chinese 象 (MC zjangX).

(chess) an elephant-shaped piece, which moves like a bishop (can be moved one square directly forward, two diagonally forward and two diagonally backward), used in Burmese chess (sittuyin)


လင်းဆွဲ

my-noun

လင်းဆွဲ • (lang:hcwai:) (classifier ကောင်)

hcwai: (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)

megabat, fruit bat, flying fox (member of the Pteropodidae family)


ဖားပြုပ်

ဖားပြုပ် • (hpa:prup) (classifier ကောင်)

ဖား (hpa:, “frog”) + ပြုပ် (prup, “cluster of lumps”)

compound

Asian common toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus)


နှာ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-na ~ s-naːr (“nose”). Cognate with Tibetan སྣ (sna, “nose”).

inh

errhine, snuff, sternutatory (substance)


ငွေ

Inherited from Old Burmese ငုယ် (nguy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ŋul ~ (d-)ŋur.


လဲ

Ceiba pentandra
Ceiba pentandra#Translingual

လဲဝါ လဲဝါ#Burmese


ပျားရည်

ပျား (pya:, “bee”) + ရည် (rany, “liquid”)


သာမဏေ

Borrowed from Pali sāmaṇera, from Sanskrit श्रामणेर (śrāmaṇera).


ကုလားအုတ်

my-noun

ကုလားအုတ် • (ku.la:ut)

desc

→ Shan: ၵလႃးဢူၵ်ႉ (kǎ láa ʼṵ̂uk)

→ Shan: ၵလႃးဢူၵ်ႉ (kǎ láa ʼṵ̂uk)

Compound of ကုလား (ku.la:, “Indian”) + အုတ် (ut), the latter borrowed from Pali oṭṭha (“camel”), from Sanskrit उष्ट्र (uṣṭra).


ရွှေ

Provisionally said to be inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-rwəj (STEDT). Cognates include Akha [script needed] (sjhý, “yellow, gold”).


အနောက်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + နောက် (nauk, “behind”).


စစ်

Per Hill (2019) (p. 27), from an earlier proto-Burmish [Term?] (“*dzik”), and cognate with Old Chinese 爭 (OC *ʔsreːŋ, “to fight, dispute”) and the first syllable of Tibetan ཟིང་ཆ (zing cha, “quarrel, dispute”).


ကော်ဖီ

→ Rawang: gopi

Borrowing from Dutch koffie, also influenced by English coffee.


ဒွာရ

Borrowed from Pali dvāra, from Sanskrit द्वार (dvāra), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *dʰwer-.


ကား

ဟာသကား

(pronunciation gá) plank which turns the pestle of an oil-press, crescent-shaped at one end to fit the waist of the mortar

(pronunciation gá) wedge-shaped fish trap made of bamboo used in shallow coastal waters


ကား

သုံးဘီးကားပနမပငငမမကမပ႔ထ့္ဘထဘနကနအ့္ပ႔္ပ့မပ္မလတတ

denotes other motor vehicles besides cars


ယဉ်

Borrowed from Sanskrit यन्त्र (yantra, “instrument, apparatus”).


သကြား

→ Mon: သဂြာ (həkrɛ̀a)

desc

→ Shan: ႀၵျႃး (xǎ kjáa), သၵျႃး (sǎ kjáa)

Borrowed from Pali sakkharā. Doublet of သကာ (sa.ka).


ပုလင်း

→ Shan: ပလႅင်း (pǎ léng)

→ Jingpho: paleng


ခြေနင်း

hkrenang: (romanization)
ရန် (classifier)

ခြေ (hkre, “foot”) + နင်း (nang:, “stepping on”)


ရှူးဖိနပ်

my-noun

ရှူးဖိနပ် • (hru:hpi.nap) (classifier ရန်)

From English shoe + ဖိနပ် (hpi.nap, “shoe”).


သော့

From Old Chinese 鎖 (OC *soːlʔ). Cognate with Khün ᨪᩳ, Lü ᦌᦸ (soa), Shan သေႃး (sáu), Tai Nüa ᥔᥨᥝᥰ (söw), Khamti ꩬူဝ်း, Khmer សោ (sao), Mon သအ်. Compare Thai โซ่ (sôo, “chain”), Lao ໂສ້ (sō, “chain”), Khün ᩈ᩠ᩅᩫ᩶ (“chain”).


စာ

စာ • (ca) (classifier ရွက် or လုံး or ပုဒ်)

ca (romanization)
ရွက် (classifier)
လုံး (classifier)
ပုဒ် (classifier)

Probably from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tsa ~ za (though this is not mentioned by STEDT). Cognate with သား (sa:, “son, child”), စာ (ca, “to sympathise with; to be considerate to; to have consideration for”). Compare Old Chinese 子 (OC *ʔslɯʔ, “child”), 字 (OC *zlɯs, “to bear; to give birth; to breed; to love; Chinese character”); see the latter for more.
Another theory by Luce compares the word to 寫 (OC *sjaːʔ, “to carry, write, copy”).

och-l

ဗမာစာ/မြန်မာစာ

အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ

letter (written or printed communication)


စာ

Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m-tsa (“sparrow”). Compare Old Chinese 雀 (OC *ʔsewɢ, “sparrow”) and 鵲 (OC *sʰaɡ, “magpie”) (STEDT).
The "shrill" sense is likely a semantic extension of the "sparrow" sense, via "to chirp like a sparrow" > "to be shrill" (supported by MED), though this is disputed (based on STEDT not linking the entry "ca 'shrill ( obs. )'" to the root page).


စာ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *dza (“to eat”). See also စား (ca:, “to eat”) (STEDT).


အခန်း

desc

→ Mon: အခါန်

→ Mon: အခါန်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ခန်း (hkan:, “room”).

af

room, compartment, apartment (of a building)

chapter (of a book); scene or part in a drama or film

segment of a monk's robe which is patched together from several pieces as prescribed


စီးကရက်

Borrowed from English cigarette, from French cigarette.


သော့တံ

သော့ (sau., “lock, key”) + တံ (tam, “rodlike thing”)


မုတ်ဆိတ်

my-noun

မုတ်ဆိတ် • (muthcit)

Borrowed from Hindi मूछ (mūch, “mustache”).


ကြွက်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *k-r-wakᴴ, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *rwak (“rat”). Cognate with Chepang रोक्युः (rok.yuʔ) and Nuosu ꉌ (hxie).


သက်တံ

သက် (sak, “to descend”) + တံ (tam, “rod”)


ကမ္ဘာ

Borrowed from Pali kappa. Doublet of ကပ် (kap).

ဂြိုဟ် ဂြိုဟ်#Burmese


လှော်ကား

my-noun

လှော်ကား • (hlauka:)

A boat of state with a high, ornamented stern.


ဒုံမင်း

Borrowed from Sanskrit धमनि (dhamáni, “pipe, tube”).

(obsolete, music) A kind of wind instrument.

(music) A zither-like stringed instrument.


နန်းမြင့်

From နန်း (nan:, “palace”) + မြင့် (mrang., “high”).

af

A palace building where the king's chief residence is and the lion throne is located.


မင်္ဂလာ

Borrowed from Pali maṅgala, from Sanskrit मङ्गल (maṅgala, “happiness”). Cognate with Thai มงคล (mong-kon). Doublet of မင်္ဂလ (mangga.la.).


သင်ခန်းစာ

သင် (sang, “to teach, learn”) + ခန်း (hkan:, “chapter”) + စာ (ca, “writing”).

lesson (section of learning or teaching)


ဟိုတယ်

Borrowed from English hotel, from French hôtel.


ကို

Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *(g/k)əw-n (“elder brother, senior male relative”). See Old Chinese 舅 (OC *ɡuʔ, “maternal uncle; brother-in-law”) for more cognates (STEDT).

och-l

ကို ဇေယျာ သော်
kui jeyya sau
Ko Zayar Thaw

(honorific) Form of address for younger men


စာအုပ်ဆိုင်

my-noun

စာအုပ်ဆိုင် • (cauphcuing)

/sàʔoʊʔsʰàɪɴ/

စာအုပ် (caup, “book”) + ဆိုင် (hcuing, “shop”).


အမဲသား

အမဲ (a.mai:, “game”) + သား (sa:, “meat”).


ဟင်း

hang: (romanization)
ပွဲ (classifier)
မည် (classifier)

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *h(w)aŋ (“rice, that which is eaten with rice (esp. curry)”). Cognate with Akha [script needed] (hɔ̀, “boiled rice”).


ထမင်း

ထမင်း နှစ်လုပ်


ဆိုင်

→ Mon: ဆေၚ်

→ Shan: သႅင်ႇ (sèng)

→ Jingpho: seng

shop (establishment that sells goods), store


မယ်

အမယ် အမယ်#Burmese

(same as အမယ် (a.mai)) woman, mother, etc.


ခေါက်ဆွဲ

→ Gujarati: ખાવસા (khāvsā)

→ Hindi: खाओ सुए (khāo sue)

/kʰaʊʔsʰwɛ́/

Borrowed from Shan ၶဝ်ႈသွႆး (khāo sáui).


ကြက်သား

ကြက် (krak, “chicken”) + သား (sa:, “meat”)


အိမ်

im (romanization)
လုံး (classifier)
ဆောင် (classifier)

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *k-jim ~ k-jum (“house; pit; womb”). Cognate with Tibetan ཁྱིམ (khyim, “house”) and Chinese 宮 /宫 (gōng, “dwelling, palace”).

inh

(card games) seat occupied by a player in a card game


တယ်လီဖုန်း

/tɛ̀lìpʰóʊɴ/

Borrowed from English telephone, from French téléphone, from Ancient Greek τῆλε (têle, “afar”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice, sound”).


ရာ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/k-ra (“place”); cognate with Old Chinese 所 (OC *sqʰraʔ, “place”) (STEDT).


ဖူး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ʔ-bu ~ *pu (“to be born; birth; bud; bloom”). Cognate with Jingpho pu (“to bloom, bud”), Old Chinese 阜 (OC *buʔ, “big mount; abundant”) (STEDT), as well as, per Luce, 苞 (OC *pruː, “bud; luxuriant”).


နံနက်

From a component နံ (nam) of unclear interpretation and origin (some suggest "planet") + a component နက် (nak) from Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔ-nakᴸ ~ m-nak (“early morning”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-na(k/p) (“idem”), whence also Jingpho mənàp (“idem”) (STEDT). Said Sino-Tibetan root may be related to *s-nak (“black”) (whence နက် (nak, “black, deep, dense”)), as the early morning is often dark.


သိုက်

my-noun

သိုက် • (suik)

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *(t)s(i/u)p (“nest, womb, scrotum”), one of a few Burmese lemmas with an -uik final that is thought to be inherited and not borrowed. Cognate with Jingpho tsip (“nest”) (STEDT).


သိုက်

my-noun

သိုက် • (suik)


သိုက်

သိုက် • (suik)

Borrowed from Pali suti (“hearing, rumor”).


ခြင်းလုံး

→ English: chinlone

/t͡ɕʰɪ́ɴlóʊɴ/

ခြင်း (hkrang:, “basket”) + အလုံး (a.lum:, “ball”)

compound

my:ခြင်းလုံး


ဆန်ပြုတ်

ဆန် (hcan, “uncooked rice”) + အပြုတ် (a.prut, “boiled food”)


နိုင်

(honorific) a title used by Mon men, in lieu of ကို (kui)


ကျေးဇူး

Jingpho: chyeju

desc

Shan: ၵေးၸူး (kée tsúu), ၵျေးၸူး (kjée tsúu)

Inherited from Old Burmese က္လဉ်ဇော (klañjo). According to the Myanmar-English Dictionary, the word is derived either from Pali kataññutā (“gratitude”) or Sanskrit कृतज्ञता (kṛtajñatā, “gratitude”), though this is phonetically unlikely. Another theory by Luce compares the word to Old Chinese 與 (OC *la, *laʔ, *las, “to acknowledge”).


ပဲ

Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *bay (“pea, bean, small weight or coin”), an areal word in Mainland Southeast Asia. Cognate with Mizo [Term?] (bê, “bean”); for more cognates outside of Tibeto-Burman, compare Mon ၜဲ (“lentil, bean”), Old Chinese 豍 (OC *peː, “pea”) and 貝 (OC *paːds, “cowrie”) (STEDT: paì "peas, beans, lentils").


ပဲ

Appears to be from the same source as the "bean" sense of Etymology 1. The sense “anna” is a semantic loan from Hindi अन्न (ann).

anna (unit of currency in British India)


မိတ်ဆွေ

မိတ် (mit, “friend”) + ဆွေ (hcwe, “kinsman”).


ဆရာတော်

my-noun

ဆရာတော် • (hca.ratau) (classifier ပါး or ဦး)

hca.ratau (romanization)
ပါး (classifier)
ဦး (classifier)

→ Shan: သြႃႇတေႃႇ (sràa tàu)

ဆရာ (hca.ra, “teacher”) + -တော် (-tau, “honorific”)

suffix

(Buddhism) abbot (of a Buddhist monastery)

(Buddhism, honorific) respectful form of address used for Buddhist monks


လေယာဉ်ပျံ

desc

လေႇယိၼ်ႇပျၢၼ်ႇ

→ Shan: လေႇယိၼ်ႇပျၢၼ်ႇ (lèe yìn pjàan)

→ Shan: လေႇယိၼ်ႇပျၢၼ်ႇ (lèe yìn pjàan)

/lèjɪ̀ɴbjàɴ/

လေယာဉ် (leyany, “aircraft”) + ပျံ (pyam, “flying”)


စာမေးပွဲ

စာ (ca, “writing”) + မေး (me:, “to ask”) + ပွဲ (pwai:, “contest”).


ပြန်

Borrowed from Sanskrit प्राण (prāṇa, “breath, used also as a measure of time”).

bor+

(archaic) A Myanmar measure of time equivalent to four seconds or ten ခရာ (hka.ra)


အခု

Colloquial form of ယခု (ya.hku., “now”).


အခု

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ခု (hku., “to prop up, place a support under”).


ရှေ့

Inherited from Old Burmese ရှိယ့် (hriy), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-rəy (“front”). Cognate with Northern Pumi [script needed] (rə³⁵ be⁵³, “front”) (STEDT: hre¹ "front").


အပြင်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ပြင် (prang, “exterior, outside”).


အပြင်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ပြင် (prang, “flat surface; shape”).


ချောင်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kl(j)u(ŋ/k) (“river, valley”), a Mainland Southeast Asian areal word which was probably borrowed from Proto-Mon-Khmer *ruŋ ~ *ruuŋ ~ *ruəŋ (“river, channel”). Compare Old Chinese 江 (OC *kroːŋ, “river”) (STEDT).


ချောင်း

The "throat" sense is linked by STEDT to Proto-Tibeto-Burman *k/s-raw(k/ŋ) ~ *k-rwa(k/ŋ) (“throat”), whence Mizo hrok (“throat”). Said Tibeto-Burman root may be allofamic with a variety of other reconstructed roots, including Proto-Sino-Tibetan *gwaŋ (“neck, throat”) (whence Old Chinese 亢 (OC *kaːŋ, *kʰaːŋs, “neck, throat”), 項 (OC *ɡroːŋʔ, “nape of neck”)) and Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ku (“neck, throat”) (whence 喉 (OC *ɡoː, “throat”)).
The "cough" sense is not given etymology by STEDT (khroṅ:chui: "cough"), and Luce adduces no cognates. As a compound, ချောင်းဆိုး (hkyaung:hcui:) rather resembles Chinese 咳嗽 (OC *qʰɯː/ɡɯː sloːɡs/sroːɡ/sloːɡ, “to cough”), which appears coincidental. That said, the second syllable ဆိုး (hcui:), traditionally taken by Burmese scholarship to denote the sense of "bad, serious", could possibly have a unique sense of "to cough" here, and be related to the earlier-seen character 嗽 (OC *sloːɡs, *sroːɡ, *sloːɡ, “to cough”). In this case, the first syllable, ချောင်း (hkyaung:), should be interpreted as "throat", and the compound ချောင်းဆိုး (hkyaung:hcui:) as "throat cough". Thus, compounds which invoke a sense of "cough" for ချောင်း (hkyaung:) are doing so metonymically.


ပိုက်ဆံ

puikhcam (romanization)
ရွက် (classifier)

desc

→ Mon: ပဆာန်

→ Mon: ပဆာန်

Borrowed from Hindi पैसा (paisā). Cognate with Rakhine ဖေ့သာ.

ခြူးပိုက်ဆံ

old Myanmar coin bearing a ခြူး (hkru:) figure


ဖိနပ်

cog

Ancient Greek πῐ́νᾰξ (pĭ́năx, “board, tablet, pinax”)


ထဘီ

From Middle Burmese ထဖီ (hta.hpi).
The first component, ထ (hta.), is a fossil prefix, as can be seen in Burmese ထရံ (hta.ram, “wall”). U Kosalla theorized that it may have come from the obsolete verb ထာ (hta, “to bar, to prevent”), as in the sentence လွားလွားကောင်းကင်၊ ငါပျံချင်လျက်၊ ရှင်တို့အများ၊ မြစ်ထာတားခဲ့ (lwa:lwa:kaung:kang| nga-pyamhkyanglyak| hrangtui.a.mya:| mrachtata:hkai., “Although I want to fly up to the sky, my disciples prevented me from doing so”).
The second component, ဖီ (hpi), means "lower fringe, branch, side, rear" as in အဖီ (a.hpi, “offshoot, penthouse, annex”), "to obtrude, extend, project", or "to prevent, obstruct", as in လိုက်ကြရာတွင် မြစ်ထာဖီတား မနိုင်ငြားမူ (luikkra.ra-twang mrachtahpita: ma.nuingngra:mu, “They followed but cannot stop him”). Hence, U Kosalla defined it as a "garment that is a branch of the main attire and prevents the lower part from nakedness". The nasalized pronunciation in the modern form of the second component, ဘီ (bhi), is not an uncommon colloquial sound change, as can be seen in ဘီး (bhi:).

(clothing) A kind of Burmese sarong for women: htamein


ဘောင်းဘီ

my-noun

ဘောင်းဘီ • (bhaung:bhi) (classifier ထည်)

desc

→ Mon: ပံၚ်မဳ

→ Mon: ပံၚ်မဳ

(clothing) trousers, pants (garment covering the body from the waist downwards)


ယောက်

my-noun

ယောက် • (yauk)

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-k-ywak (“poker, pudding-stick, ladle”) (STEDT). Cognate with Tibetan སྐྱོགས (skyogs, “ladle, dipper”); the traditional comparison with Old Chinese 勺 (OC *pljewɢ, *bljewɢ, “ladle, spoon”) appears phonetically untenable, based on newer reconstructions of the pronunciation.


အငြိမ့်

အ- (a.-, “nominalizer”) + ငြိမ့် (ngrim., “to feel springy”)

af

anyeint, a form of Burmese entertainment involving singing, dancing, and comedy


အင်္ကျီ

Borrowed from Hindi अंगिया (aṅgiyā, “angiya, bodice”).

bor+

(clothing) general term for upper garment such as shirt, jacket, coat, etc.


အင်းကျီ

အင်္ကျီ အင်္ကျီ#Burmese

Alternative spelling of အင်္ကျီ (angkyi)


ခဲတံ

ခဲ (hkai:, “lead (metal)”) + တံ (tam, “rod”).

compound

(lead) pencil (graphite writing instrument)


ထည်

och-l

袗 (OC *kljɯnʔ, *kljɯns, “plain unlined garment”)


ရန်

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *g-raːl ~ *g-ran ~ *ray (“enemy, fight, quarrel, strife, sword, war”). Cognate with Mizo [Term?] (ráal, “enemy, the foe (in warfare)”), Tibetan [script needed] (ḥgran-pa, “to fight, contend with”), རལ་གྲི (ral gri, “sword, dagger”). Said Tibeto-Burman root is likely related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-gra (“stranger, enemy”), whence Tibetan དགྲ (dgra, “enemy”) and Old Chinese 旅 (OC *ɡ·raʔ, “guest, stranger, traveler; to travel, lodge”) (STEDT).


သဘက်ခါ

Colloquial form of သန်ဘက်ခါ (sanbhakhka).


အလျင်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + လျင် (lyang, “swift, sharp”).


အလျင်

Equated with the "velocity, quick" sense in Etymology 1 by MED. Luce, on the other hand, separates it from the "quick" sense and compares it with Old Chinese 前 (OC *zleːn, “before, front”), albeit with an incorrect transcription as "alhyaṅ" (with an "h").


အချိန်

desc

→ Mon: အခိၚ်

→ Mon: အခိၚ်

→ Kayan: akhein

ဘယ်အချိန်ရှိပြီလဲ။
bhaia.hkyinhri.prilai:||
What time is it?

time (inevitable progression into the future)


နာရီ

Borrowed from Sanskrit नाडी (nāḍī, “a measure of time”).

bor+

clock, watch (portable or wearable timepiece)

ပါဒ် ပါဒ်#Burmese

(archaic) A traditional Burmese measure of time equivalent to four ပါဒ် (pad) or 24 minutes


နာရီ

Borrowed from Pali nārī (“woman, wife, female”), from Sanskrit नारी (nārī, “woman, wife, female”).

der

traditional art technique of depicting the female figure


အတန်း

→ Shan: တၢၼ်း (táan)

→ Jingpho: tan

desc

→ Mon: အတာန်

→ Mon: အတာန်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + တန်း (tan:, “form, class, standard”).

af

class (group of students in a regularly scheduled meeting with a teacher), grade, form


ကိစ္စ

Borrowed from Pali kicca (“duty, obligation”), from Sanskrit कृत्य (kṛtya).


နေ့လယ်

နေ့ (ne., “day”) + လယ် (lai, “middle, centre”).


ညနေ

late afternoon, evening (after about 4 p.m.)


အား

the last in the set of twelve vowels traditionally taught in the learning of the Burmese language


အား

The "strength" sense is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *k-ra (“strength; to win; classifier for people”). Cognate with Old Chinese 力 (OC *rɯɡ, “strength”) (STEDT). Sagart relates the "free" sense to 暇 (OC *ɡraːs, “leisure”).


မိုင်

→ Shan: မႅင်ႇ (mèng)


လောက်

my-noun

လောက် • (lauk)

Borrowed from Mon လံက် (lok), from Proto-Mon-Khmer *lɔk.

maggot (dipterous insect’s larva that eats decomposing flesh)


ရာသီဥတု

ရာသီ (rasi, “season”) + ဥတု (u.tu., “weather”).

af

climate (long-term atmospheric conditions)

ရာသီဥတုဘယ်လောက်လဲ။
rasiu.tu.bhailauklai:||
How's the weather?


အစီအစဉ်

/ʔəsìʔəsɪ̀ɴ/

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + စီ (ci, “to line up”) + အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + စဉ် (cany, “to line up, arrange in order”).


စာရေး

→ Shan: ၸရေး (tsǎ rée)

→ Jingpho: chyăre

→ Mon: စာရေ

စာ (ca, “letter”) + ရေး (re:, “to write”).


တိုး

a fabulous creature said to inhabit the Himalayan regions


ခဏ

Learned borrowing from Pali khaṇa. Cognate with Mon ခၞ, Khmer ខណៈ (khaʼnaʼ), Thai ขณะ (kà-nà), Lao ຂະນະ (kha na).

a moment (very brief period of time), a short while

(archaic) a measure of time spanning 0.16 seconds or four လယ (la.ya.), traditionally described as ten winks of the eyes or ten snaps of the fingers


စော

Inherited from Old Burmese စဝ် (saw), itself probably borrowed from Shan ၸဝ်ႈ (tsāo).

(honorific) a title used by Burmese, Arakanese and Shan royalty


မွေးနေ့

မွေး (mwe:, “to be born”) + နေ့ (ne., “day”).

af

မွေးနေ့မင်္ဂလာပါ


လည်ချောင်း

According to MED, from လည် (lany, “neck”) + ချောင်း (hkyaung:, “cough”), though the second component is likely better-interpreted as "throat"; see there for more.


ငှက်ပျော

my-noun

ငှက်ပျော • (hngakpyau:) (classifier ဖီး)

hngakpyau: (romanization)
ဖီး (classifier)

The first syllable, ငှက် (hngak), is from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-ŋak (“plantain, banana”), and cognate with the first syllable of Akha [script needed] (ŋa djɛq, “wild banana”) (STEDT). The second syllable, ပျော (pyau:), is of unclear origin and interpretation.


လိုက်

my-noun

လိုက် • (luik)


အရိပ်

desc

→ Shan: ဢယိၵ်ႈ (ʼǎ yīk)

→ Shan: ဢယိၵ်ႈ (ʼǎ yīk)

shadow (dark image projected onto a surface)


ဓား

dha: (romanization)
ချောင်း (classifier)

→ English: dah

Stephen Baron posits Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ta-w (“knife, axe, sword”) as the ancestor of both this word (and hence English dah) and Old Chinese 刀 (OC *taːw, “knife, blade”) (whence English dao) (STEDT).


ခက်

The "difficult" sense is from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *kak (“difficult; hardship”), and cognate with Tibetan ཁག་པོ (khag po, “difficult”).
The "offshoot from a branch" sense, reflected in အခက် (a.hkak, “idem”) and ခက်ရင်း (hkak-rang:, “fork”), is, despite MED's grouping, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ka(ː)k (“fork, branch, crotch”), and cognate with Mizo [Term?] (kaak, “fork of tree”) and Old Chinese 支 (OC *kje, “branch”); see the Chinese for more (STEDT).

အခက် အခက်#Burmese

(same as အခက် (a.hkak)) offshoot from a branch; difficulty


သနပ်ခါး

→ English: thanakha

→ French: thanakha

→ Thai: ทานาคา (taa-naa-kaa)

→ Jingpho: sănap hka

→ Shan: ႀၼၢပ်ႈၶႃး (xǎ nāap kháa)

→ Shan: သၼၢပ်ႈၶႃး (sǎ nāap kháa)

com+

compound of သနပ် (sa.nap, “salad, clammy cherry tree”) + ခါး (hka:, “bitter”)

Limonia acidissima
Limonia acidissima#Translingual

thanakha, a kind of cosmetic in the form of a fragrant paste made from the bark and root of the wood apple tree


ကာ

Cognate with Old Chinese 干 (OC *kaːn, “shield”).


ကတ်

Borrowed from English card, from Old French carte, from Latin charta, from Ancient Greek χάρτης (khártēs, “paper, papyrus”).

der

card (flat, normally rectangular piece of stiff paper, plastic etc.)


မေး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ma-y (“face, cheek, front, ahead, first”) (STEDT). Doublet of မှာ (hma, “in, on, at”).


စပ်

ငရုတ် ငရုတ်#Burmese

(regional, Danu) Synonym of ငရုတ် (nga.rut, “chili”)


စပ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tsjap (“to join, connect”). Cognate with Jingpho [script needed] (tśyap, “to be on friendly terms; to adhere (as soot to a roof)”), Old Chinese 接 (OC *ʔseb, “to connect, contact”) (STEDT).

cog

one of a pair of semicircular planks forming a spokeless cart wheel


မိတ်

my-noun

မိတ် • (mit)

Borrowed from Pali mitta (“friend”), from Sanskrit मित्र (mitra, “idem”). Doublet of မေတ္တာ (metta).


မိတ်

မိတ် • (mit)


ကင်မရာ

kangma.ra (romanization)
လုံး (classifier)


ရော်ဘာ

→ Mon: လဗာ

rubber (pliable material derived from the sap of the rubber tree)


ဘက်

Either from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *paŋ ~ *pak (“side”) (whence Old Chinese 旁 (OC *baːŋ, “side”)) or Pali bhāga (“part, portion, fraction, share, etc.”); in the latter case, cognate with Thai ภาค (pâak).

bor

side (flat surface of a three-dimensional object)


မြေး

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *b/m-ləy (“grandchild, nephew, niece”). Cognate with S'gaw Karen လံၤ (leē).


ထောင့်

→ Shan: ထွင်ႉ (thâ̰ung)

corner (space in the angle between converging lines or walls)


မြေပုံ

မြေ (mre, “earth”) + ပုံ (pum, “picture”). The non-"map" senses ("mound", "sand model") invoke the etymologically-separate "pile" sense of ပုံ (pum).


လက်ခံ

လက် (lak, “hand”) + ခံ (hkam, “to accept”).


စာရင်းကိုင်

/səjɪ́ɴɡàɪɴ/

စာရင်း (carang:, “accounting”) + ကိုင် (kuing, “to keep books”).


ဈာပန

Borrowed from Pali jhāpana (“funeral, cremation”).


မော်တော်ဆိုင်ကယ်

my-noun

မော်တော်ဆိုင်ကယ် • (mautauhcuingkai) (classifier စီး)

mautauhcuingkai (romanization)
စီး (classifier)

/mɔ̀tɔ̀sʰàɪɴkɛ̀/


မှို

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔ-məw¹ (“mushroom”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *g/s-məw (“mushroom, fungus”). Cognate with Nuosu ꂥ (hmu), Gong มู๋, Naxi mul, Japhug tɤjmɤɣ, and Jingpho kämu (STEDT). Luce's comparison with Old Chinese 毛 (OC *maːw, *maːws, “vegetation; mold”) appears at first glance to be outdated, as the "mold" sense for the Chinese is usually derived internally as a semantic extension of the basic "fur" sense. It is plausible, however, that the "mold" sense was etymologically separate in Chinese (and originally cognate with the Tibeto-Burman form above), and eventually pigeonholed onto the same character 毛 (máo) as the "fur" sense, with semantic reinforcement from "fur". Considering that the Lolo-Burmese form for "body hair" is reconstructed as *ʔ-məw¹, it is possible that the two terms for "fungus" and "fur" are etymologically the same root within Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Also note similarities to the later 蘑 (mó, “mushroom”).


မျက်မှန်

myakhman (romanization)
လက် (classifier)

မျက်- (myak-, “pertaining to the eyes”) + မှန် (hman, “glass”)

affix

မျက်မှန်တလက်


ယာဉ်မောင်း

ယာဉ် (yany, “vehicle”) + မောင်း (maung:, “to drive”).

af

ယာဉ်မောင်းလိုင်စင်


မြေပဲ

မြေ (mre, “ground”) + ပဲ (pai:, “nut, pea”).


ရေခဲသေတ္တာ

/jèɡɛ́θɪʔtà/

ရေခဲ (rehkai:, “ice”) + သေတ္တာ (setta, “box”), a calque of English icebox.


အဝတ်လျှောက်စက်

/ʔəwʊʔʃaʊʔsɛʔ/

အဝတ် (a.wat, “clothing”) + လျှောက် (hlyauk, “circulating”) + စက် (cak, “machine”)


စကားဝှက်

စကား (ca.ka:, “word”) + ဝှက် (hwak, “hide”)


ဒေသိယစကား

/dèθḭja̰zəɡá/

Sanskrit देशीय (deśīya, “native, local”) + စကား (ca.ka:, “language”)


အိတ်

Inherited from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ʔip ~ *ʔiːt (“bag, scrotum”). Cognate with Mizo ip (“bag”) (STEDT).

inh+

pocket (bag stitched to an item of clothing)


ပြဒါးချိန်

/bədád͡ʑèɪɴ/


အစု

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + စု (cu., “group”).

af

group, set, or assemblage (of people or things)

(archaic) system of categorization of persons by trade or occupation (in the case of troops by corps or regiment)

section of town or countryside where people of the same race or occupation settle; community


ကြက်သွန်နီ

my-noun

ကြက်သွန်နီ • (krakswanni) (classifier လုံး)

krakswanni (romanization)
လုံး (classifier)

/t͡ɕɛʔθʊ̀ɴnì/

ကြက်သွန် (krakswan, “onion”) + နီ (ni, “red”).


စားပွဲ

From စား (ca:, “eat”) + ပွဲ (pwai:, “festival”).


နံပြား

nampra: (romanization)
ချပ် (classifier)

Borrowed from Hindi नान (nān, “naan”) + ပြား (pra:, “flat”).


ပေါင်မုန့်

my-noun

ပေါင်မုန့် • (paungmun.) (classifier လုံး or ချပ်)

paungmun. (romanization)
လုံး (classifier)
ချပ် (classifier)

From Portuguese pão (“bread”) + မုန့် (mun., “snack”).


ကတ်ကြေး

desc

→ Mon: ကတ်ကြဲာ

→ Mon: ကတ်ကြဲာ

Said to be from Pali kattarikā; more likely from Hindi क़ैंची (qa͠icī).


ရာသီ

Borrowed from Pali rāsi (“quantity, heap”), from Sanskrit राशि (rāśi).

bor+

any one of the twelve signs of the zodiac

(elegant, poetic) one of six seasons recognised in Pali scholarship


ဇနီး

Borrowed from Sanskrit जनी (janī, “bride, daughter-in-law”), perhaps via Hindi.


ဂျုံ

→ Shan: ၵျုင်ႇ (kjùng)

Borrowed from Hindi गेहूँ (gehū̃, “wheat”) or Bengali গম (gom, “wheat”); both ultimately from Sanskrit गोधूम (godhūma, “idem”).


မြား

Inherited from Old Burmese မ္လား (mla:), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g/b/m-la-j (“bow; arrow”). Cognate with Jingpho mäla, päla, Newar बला (balā), Drung tvma, S'gaw Karen ပျၢ် (pla̱), and Old Chinese 射 (OC *ɢljaːɡs, *laːɡs, *ɢljaːɡ, *laːɡ, “to shoot (an arrow, etc.)”) (STEDT).


အသံ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + သံ (sam, “voice, sound”).


အမိုး

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + မိုး (mui:, “sky, roof”).


အရောင်

desc

→ Mon: အရံၚ်

→ Mon: အရံၚ်

→ Pa'o Karen: အရောင်ႏ


နတ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *na-(n/t) (“sick; evil spirit”); cognate with Jingpho nat (“spirit, ancestral spirit”). Doublet of နာ (na, “hurt; sick”) (STEDT).
Alternatively, MED considers the word as borrowed from Pali nātha (“protector”).

cog

(mythology) nat (spirits heavily venerated in Burmese folk religion, either celestial or spectral).


မင်

→ Mon: မှၚ် (hmɛŋ)

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-maŋ ~ s-mak (“black, dark; ink”). Cognate with Tibetan སྨག (smag, “dark, darkness”), མོག་པ (mog pa, “dark-coloured”) and Chinese 墨 (mò, “ink”).
The Myanmar-English Dictionary’s derivation from Pali masi (“soot”) is phonologically implausible.


ခါး

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m-kal ~ *s-gal (“back (lower); kidney; load; to carry”) (STEDT). Cognate with Old Chinese 荷 (OC *qʰaːls, *ɡaːl, *ɡaːlʔ, “to carry, bear; load, charge”); see there for more. Hill (2019) (p. 207) adduces 肝 (OC *kaːn, “liver”), Tibetan མཁལ (mkhal, “kidney, reins”) as phonetically-sound cognates.


ထိုင်ခုံ

ထိုင် (htuing, “sitting”) + ခုံ (hkum, “raised seat”)


ငယ်

Inherited from Old Burmese ငဲ, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-ŋa-j (“small; inferior; offspring”). Compare Old Chinese 兒 (OC *ŋeː, *ŋje, “child; diminutive suffix”) (STEDT).
MED appears to consider the "mouse deer" sense etymologically equivalent to the "small" sense, due to the chevrotain's small size.


နိဗ္ဗာန်

my-noun

နိဗ္ဗာန် • (nibban)

Borrowed from Pali nibbāna, from Sanskrit निर्वाण (nirvāṇa).


လက်သည်

လက် (lak, “arm”) + -သည် (-sany, “practitioner”)


ဝမ်းဆွဲ

ဝမ်း (wam:, “womb”) + ဆွဲ (hcwai:, “pulling”)


ဆီ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tsil (“fat, grease; oil”). Compare Tibetan ཚིལ (tshil, “fat”) and possibly Old Chinese 脂 (OC *kji, “fat, grease”).


ဒေါ်လာ

my-noun

ဒေါ်လာ • (daula)

Borrowed from English dollar, from Dutch daler, daalder, from German Taler, Thaler.


ပုံ

→ Pa'o Karen: ပုင်ႏ

→ Shan: ပုင်ႇ (pùng) / ပုမ်ႇ (pùm), ဢပုမ်ႇ (ʼǎ pùm)

desc

→ Lü: ᦔᦳᧂᧈ (ṗung¹)

→ Lü: ᦔᦳᧂᧈ (ṗung¹)

→ Tai Nüa: ᥙᥧᥛᥱ (pǔm)

→ Mon: ပုံ

Sino-Tibetan. Cognate with Tibetan བབས (babs, “shape, form, appearance”), དབྱིབས (dbyibs, “shape, form, figure”) and Old Chinese 法 (OC *pqab, “law, norm”).

cog

picture (representation of visible reality produced by drawing, etc.); diagram, illustration; figure

(on official documents) term equivalent to the employment of the word 'signed', attesting to the authenticity of the document and the authority promulgating it


ပုံ

Alternative form of ဗုံ (bum, “a kind of drum”)


ဓာတ်ပုံ

ဓာတ် (dhat, “essence, quality”) + ပုံ (pum, “picture”).

com

stupa which is a reliquary for the Lord Buddha's relics

ဓာတ်ပုံရိုက်


ကုလားထိုင်

desc

→ Mon: ကလာထေၚ်

→ Mon: ကလာထေၚ်

ကုလား (ku.la:, “foreign, Indian”) + ထိုင် (htuing, “sitting”).


အိပ်ခန်း

my-noun

အိပ်ခန်း • (iphkan:)

အိပ် (ip, “sleep”) + ခန်း (hkan:, “room”)


အိမ်သာ

my-noun

အိမ်သာ • (imsa)

အိမ် (im, “house”) + သာ (sa, “pleasant”).

affix

အိမ်သာ ဘယ်မှာလဲ။ ― imsa bhaihmalai:|| ― Where is the toilet?

toilet (lavatory, w.c. (the room); bathroom with toilet), latrine, lavatory, water closet


ခံ

karanda (Carissa carandas), a kind of shrub or small tree


အက်စစ်

my-noun

အက်စစ် • (akcac)


အက္ခရာ

Borrowed from Pali akkhara, from Sanskrit अक्षर (akṣara). Cognate with Shan ဢႅၵ်ႉၶရႃႇ (ʼḛ̂k khǎ ràa).

cog

Shan ဢႅၵ်ႉၶရႃႇ (ʼḛ̂k khǎ ràa)

alphabet (ordered set of letters used in a language)


ကွန်ပျူတာ

computer (programmable electronic device)


မျက်တောင်

မျက်- (myak-, “pertaining to the eyes”) + တောင် (taung, “mountain”)

affix

eyelash (hair growing on the edge of an eyelid)


မှန်ဘီလူး

မှန် (hman, “glass”) + ဘီလူး (bhilu:, “ogre”)

lens (object focusing or defocusing the light passing through it)


ပြည်

STEDT gives no etymology (prañ "country"). Luce adduces Old Chinese 邦 (OC *proːŋ, “nation, sovereign state”) as a cognate. While Wang 1982 and Schuessler 2007 take the Chinese term as a derivative of 封 (OC *poŋ, *poŋs, “border, wrapper; to close”), which may or may not be related, Luce's theory seems to be a virtually exact match. This is thought (per Marc Miyake, etc.) to be a Pyu loanword (which probably doesn't change the analysis).


ပြည်

စလယ် စလယ်#Burmese

တင်း တင်း#Burmese

unit of grain measure equivalent to four စလယ် (ca.lai) or 1/16th of တင်း (tang:)


ပြည်

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *m-blyan (“pus, boil”). Cognate with Yao'an Lolopo bbi (“pus”), S'gaw Karen အဖံ (ʼahpee, “pus”), Naxi bber (“pus; to fester”), Kala Lizu pu⁵³. See also perhaps Old Chinese 膿 (OC *nuːŋ, “pus”).


မျက်နှာ

မျက်- (myak-) + နှာ (hna), literally “eye and nose”.


မျိုး

Inherited from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(m/b)rəw (“grain; seed; lineage”) (STEDT), whence Old Chinese 物 (OC *mɯd, “thing, matter, substance”); see there for more cognates.

inh+

pedigree, race, breed, strain, variety, species


လူမျိုး

လူ (lu, “human”) + မျိုး (myui:, “kind”).


ကြိုးကြာ

my-noun

ကြိုးကြာ • (krui:kra) (classifier ကောင်)


သင်

cog

Tibetan བཟིན་བཟང (bzin bzang, “dear sir!”)


သင်

a kind of reed used for making mats: Clinogyne dichotomata


ထားဝယ်

→ Thai: ทวาย (tá-waai)

→ Lao: ທະວາຍ (tha wāi)

→ Shan: ထဝႄႇ (thǎ wàae)

→ Khmer: ថ្វាយ (thvaay)

→ Japanese: ダウェー (dawē)

Borrowed from Mon ထဝဲါ (“to sit cross-legged”), in reference to what the Buddha did in the air over the place according to Mūlamūlī (မူလမူလီ), a Mon book on cosmogony or to his sitting posture. See also Burmese ထက်ဝယ်ဖွဲ့ခွေ (htak-waihpwai.hkwe, “to sit cross-legged”).

cog

ထက်ဝယ်ဖွဲ့ခွေ

လူမျိုး လူမျိုး

(~လူမျိုး) Tavoyan people; whose language has been regarded as a dialect of Burmese, but sometimes as a distinct one from it.


သဒ္ဒါ

Borrowed from Pali sadda, from Sanskrit शब्द (śabda).

grammar (rules for speaking and writing a language)


သတင်းစာ

သတင်း (sa.tang:, “news”) + စာ (ca, “writing”)


နော်

my-noun

နော် • (nau)

(honorific) a title used by S'gaw Karen women


အပ်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *k-ra(p/m) (“needle”). Cognate with Drung wvp and Lolopo hhexr, as well as Old Chinese 針 (OC *kjum, *kjums, “needle”) (with the literature usually comparing the less-common variants 鍼 (OC *ɡam, *ɡram, *kjɯm) and 箴 (OC *kjɯm)) (STEDT).
MED groups the "put things together, proper" senses with the "needle" sense, though it is unclear whether they are etymologically related. Luce's comparison of the "proper" sense with Old Chinese 合 (OC *kuːb, *ɡuːb, “to join, fit”) is phonetically unsound.


ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း

/pʰóʊɴd͡ʑít͡ɕáʊɴ/

ဘုန်းကြီး (bhun:kri:, “monk”) + ကျောင်း (kyaung:, “school”)

af

(Buddhism) monastery (place of residence for members of a religious community)


စာသင်ခန်း

စာသင် (casang, “to study, learn”) + ခန်း (hkan:, “room”).


ပန်းခြံ

ပန်း (pan:, “flower”) + ခြံ (hkram, “garden”).

affix

garden (piece of land outside with flowers and plants)


တိုက်

my-noun

တိုက် • (tuik)

desc

→ Shan: တိူၵ်ႈ (tōek, “brick building; continent”)

Unknown. Shared lexeme across several languages in mainland Southeast Asia, including Shan တိုၵ်း (túek), Mon တိုက်, Thai ตึก (dtʉ̀k), and Lao ຕຶກ (tưk).

အမေရိက

မြောက်အမေရိက (mrauk-a.meri.ka.; ), တောင်အမေရိက (taung-a.meri.ka., )

building or place where some specialized activity is carried out, such as business concern, depository, works, store, etc.

(historical) administrative unit; circle within a state

group of buildings belonging to a monastery or nunnery


စာတိုက်

my-noun

စာတိုက် • (catuik)

စာ (ca, “letter”) + တိုက် (tuik, “brick building”)

affix

post office (place concerned with the business of delivering letters, etc.)


ဘဏ်တိုက်

ဘဏ် (bhan, “bank (institution)”) + တိုက် (tuik, “brick building”).

bank (branch office of a financial institution)


လက်ဖက်ရည်ဆိုင်

/ləpʰɛʔjèzàɪɴ/

လက်ဖက်ရည် (lakhpak-rany, “tea”) + ဆိုင် (hcuing, “shop”)


ရုပ်ရှင်

အရုပ် (a.rup, “picture”) + ရှင် (hrang, “alive”).


ရုံး

Anogeissus acuminata
Anogeissus acuminata#Translingual

large timber tree yielding a strong and resilient yellowish wood (Anogeissus acuminata)


သံရုံး

သံ (sam, “diplomat”) + ရုံး (rum:, “office”)


အားကစား

အား (a:, “strength”) + ကစား (ka.ca:, “play”)

game (playful activity, amusement, pastime)

sport (any athletic activity that uses physical skills)


သီချင်း

sihkyang: (romanization)
ပုဒ် (classifier)

သီ (si, “to sing, chant”) + အချင်း (a.hkyang:, “song, poem”).


ပုရပိုက်

pu.ra.puik (romanization)
ဆူ (classifier)

English: parabaik

From Sanskrit पुस्त (pusta, “book”, compare पुस्तक (pustaka)) + पत्त्र (pattra, “paper”).

der

compare <i class="Deva mention" lang="sa">पुस्तक</i> (pustaka)


အကြံ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ကြံ (kram, “to think”).


ဝေါဟာရ

Borrowed from Pali vohāra (“designation, term, mode of speech; trade, business”).


ဖုတ်

evil spirit animating the body of a dying or dead person


မေးစေ့

မေး (me:, “lower jaw”) + စေ့ (ce., “protuberance”)


တော်

my-noun

တော် • (tau)

According to STEDT:
* The "related" sense is from a Proto-Tibeto-Burman *daw (“to be related”), with Jingpho dō (“related”) as the only adduced cognate.
* The "suitable" (as well as perhaps "clever") senses are from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *taːp ~ *m-daw (“capable, fit, beautiful”), and cognate with Jingpho htap (“beautiful, capable”).
The "rumbling noise", "stop", and "honorific" senses are not listed by STEDT, though the "honorific" sense could be an extension of the "suitable, clever" sense.

inh

loud rumbling noise (during an earthquake)

တော်နေရာ တော်နေရာ#Burmese

first out of the five blocks of seats to which courtiers attending an audience given by the king are assigned according to protocol (same as တော်နေရာ (taunera))


မြှား

မြား မြား#Burmese


ပိတ်

my-noun

ပိတ် • (pit)

ပိတ် နှစ်တောင်


ဘေးဆိုး

ဘေး (bhe:, “danger, harm”) + ဆိုး (hcui:, “serious, critical”)

affix

disaster (unexpected catastrophe causing physical damage, etc.)


မူး

Jingpho: mu

one tenth of a kyat during the Konbaung era (often translated as ten cents)

one eighth of a rupee during the colonial era

ကျပ်သား ကျပ်သား#Burmese

one eighth of ကျပ်သား (kyapsa:) (traditional weight measure)


မောင်း

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *muː(k/ŋ) (“arm, cubit”). Cognate with Yakkha [script needed] (muk, “arm, hand, length, cubit”) (STEDT).

cog

firing mechanism of a gun, trigger mechanism of a crossbow, etc.

simple wooden device of boom and pestle for polishing rice


မောင်း

(archaic) a gong; an old Myanmar unit of time (60 gongs = 24 hours)


မောင်း

a maund (a unit of measure approximately equal to 22.5 viss)


ဖား

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-bal (“frog”). Cognate with Tibetan སྦལ་པ (sbal pa); has also been tentatively compared with Old Chinese 蹯 (OC *ban, “paw”) (STEDT), as well as to 蟆 (OC *mraː, “toad”) by Luce.


ပင့်ကူ

pang.ku (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)


ခြေဖနောင့်

/t͡ɕʰèbəna̰ʊɴ/

ခြေ (hkre, “foot”) + ဖနောင့် (hpa.naung., “heel”)


ဆိတ်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *V-ci:tᴸ (“goat, sheep”), from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *r-tsit (“goat, beard, goatee, yak-hair”). Cognate with Lashi choyt, Nuosu ꍶ (chyt, “goat”), Japhug tsʰɤt (“goat”), Naxi ceel (“goat”), Drung vchit (“goat”) (STEDT).


သိုး

→ Shan: သူဝ်း (só)

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *səw (“sheep”). Cognate with Kayan [Term?] (θɔ³³, “sheep”) (STEDT).


ယုန်

yun (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)
တုတ် (classifier)

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b-jəw-n ~ bwəj; cognate with Tibetan ཡོས (yos).


ပတ်

→ Jingpho: bat

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *bat (“to wind around”); cognate with Jingpho bàt (“idem”) (STEDT: pat "wind around, encircle").

ရက်သတ္တပတ် ရက်သတ္တပတ်#Burmese

Short for ရက်သတ္တပတ် (raksatta.pat, “week”).


ပတ်

Borrowed from Pali paṭaha, from Sanskrit पटह (paṭaha, “kettledrum, war drum”).


ရိုး

Inherited from Old Burmese ရိုဝ်း (ruiw). The "bone" sense is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *rus (“bone”). MED groups all other senses etymologically together with the "bone" sense, which seems to be tentatively supported by Luce 1981 but not by STEDT, which gives no etymology for the "simple" sense (rûi "plain, simple; artless; honest; old-fashioned"). The various senses may perhaps be linked with the following semantic shifts: "bone" > "handle" > "long stretch or row" > "lineage" > "tradition, custom" > "usual and customary" > "simple, honest".

inh+

ridge, embankment, fencing, fluting, etc.

long stretch or row, such as:
watercourse


ဝါး

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *wa² (“bamboo”), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r/g/s-pʷa (“bamboo”). Cognate with Lhao Vo vo: and Old Chinese 笆 (OC *praː, *braːʔ, “thorny bamboo; bamboo basketry; bamboo fence”) (STEDT).
The "clappers" and "music timing" senses are grouped with the "bamboo" sense by MED, perhaps because ancient Burmese clappers were made of bamboo, and used to keep time in music.


ငရုတ်

From Pali marica (“black pepper”) or Sanskrit मरिच (marica, “pepper shrub”).

chili (spicy fresh or dried fruit of capsicum); red or cayenne pepper


ချင်း

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kjaŋ (“ginger”), a well-known Wanderwort which supplies the word for "ginger" in most languages worldwide. Cognate with Old Chinese 薑 (OC *kaŋ) (STEDT).


ငရုတ်ကောင်း

/ŋəjoʊʔɡáʊɴ/

ငရုတ် (nga.rut, “cayenne pepper, chili”) + ကောင်း (kaung:, “good, fresh”)


လေမုန်တိုင်း

my-noun

လေမုန်တိုင်း • (lemuntuing:)

/lèmòʊɴdáɪɴ/

လေ (le, “air”) + မုန်တိုင်း (muntuing:, “storm”)


ကွမ်းရွက်ပင်

/kʊ́ɴjwɛʔpɪ̀ɴ/

ကွမ်းရွက် (kwam:rwak, “betel leaf”) + အပင် (a.pang, “plant”)


ဂျင်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *ʔ-gyaŋ¹ (“to spin, rotate; top (toy)”), with no known cognates outside of Lolo-Burmese. Cognate with Akha [script needed] (jaw ̬jaw ̬, “to surround, go around”) (STEDT).

cog

a gambling game played with a square spinning top bearing pictures of four animals


လမ်းသရဲ

လမ်း (lam:, “road, street”) + သရဲ (sa.rai:, “ghost”)


ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ

/pʰwɛ̰zíbòʊɴʔət͡ɕʰèɡàɴʔṵbədè/

ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံ (hpwai.cany:pum, “organization, establishment”) + အခြေခံ (a.hkrehkam, “basis, foundation”) + ဥပဒေ (u.pa.de, “enacted law, customary law”)

constitution (formal or informal system of primary principles and laws regulating a government or other institutions)

en-ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ-my-noun-R7WaRUSv


ကျွဲ

kywai: (romanization)
ကောင် (classifier)

Inherited from Old Burmese က္လွယ် (klway), Proto-Tibeto-Burman *lwaːy (“buffalo”). Compare Lao ຄວາຍ (khuāi), Thai ควาย (kwaai), Zhuang vaiz.


အာလူး

my-noun

အာလူး • (alu:)

S'gaw Karen: အၣ်လူ (ʼà loo)

Shan: ဢႃႇလူး (ʼàa lúu)

Borrowed from Hindi आलू (ālū, “potato”).


လက်ဖက်

→ English: lahpet

desc

→ Mon: လက်ဖက်

→ Mon: လက်ဖက်

From an element လက် (lak), theorized to be from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-la (“leaf; tea”), + ဖက် (hpak, “leaf”).

pickled tea leaves mixed with other ingredients and served as a local delicacy, lahpet


လက်ဖက်

လက် (lak, “arm, hand”) + ဖက် (hpak, “to embrace”).

လက်ခုပ်

unit of measure for amount contained in two cupped hands

unit of dry measure for the amount contained in a cupped hand

unit of measure for girth of trees, pillars; equivalent to what can be encircled in both arms


ဖက်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-pak (“leaf”). Cognate with Jingpho [script needed] (pha, “tea”).

leaf (for wrapping things, rolling cheroots, roofing house, etc.)


စက်ဘီး

စက် (cak, “circle, wheel, cycle”) + ဘီး (bhi:, “wheel”).


ဆံ

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *(t)sam (“hair on the head”).


ကေ

Borrowed from Pali kesa. Doublet of ကေသ (kesa.) and ကေသာ (kesa).


ခင်

အခင် အခင်#Burmese

(same as အခင် (a.hkang)) reed in a wind instrument


ခင်

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-gaŋ (“hill, ridge, mountain”); see Old Chinese 岡 (OC *klaːŋ, “ridge, crest of hill; mountain”) for more (STEDT).

och-l

ridge (of land, narrow elevation across a surface


ခင်

Borrowed from Chinese 琴 (qín, “zither”).

ဒုံမင်း ဒုံမင်း#Burmese

a stringed musical instrument somewhat like the Burmese ဒုံမင်း (dummang:), but played with bamboo strikers


ခင်

From Proto-Lolo-Burmese *kaŋ (“father, grandfather, honorific”). See also Old Chinese 翁 (OC *qloːŋ, “old man”) and 公 (OC *kloːŋ, “duke, high-ranked male”) for further discussion of possible cognates (STEDT).


ဖိုး

ဘိုး ဘိုး#Burmese


ကလောင်

From Hindi क़लम (qalam), from Arabic قَلَم (qalam).


ရထား

→ Mon: ယထာ

Borrowed from Pali ratha (“chariot, car”).

bor+

မီးရထား မီးရထား#Burmese

စစ်တုရင် စစ်တုရင်#Burmese

(chess) chessman representing a war-chariot in စစ်တုရင် (cactu.rang, “chaturanga”), corresponding to the rook or castle in international chess


မြ

Possibly from Sanskrit मरकत (marakata, “emerald”) or Pali marakata (“emerald”). Compare Tibetan མར་གད (mar gad, “emerald”).


ဦးထုပ်

desc

→ Mon: အထုပ်

→ Mon: အထုပ်

ဦး (u:, “head, front”) + ထုပ် (htup, “to wrap, bundle”).


ဘား

Borrowed from English bar.
The "gymnastics" sense is derived from parallel bars, by metonymy.


ဘား

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

nonlemma

Obsolete spelling of ဖား (hpa:, “frog”).


ဖျား

အဖျား အဖျား#Burmese


အဖျား

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ဖျား (hpya:, “to be feverish, have a fever”).


အဖျား

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ဖျား (hpya:, “extremity, tip, head”).


သူငယ်

သူ- (su-, “agent prefix”) + ငယ် (ngai, “small”).


ခေတ္တ

Borrowed from Pali khetta. Doublet of ခေတ် (hket).


အိမ်သူ

my-noun

အိမ်သူ • (imsu)

From အိမ် (im, “house”) + သူ (su, “person”). Compare with Korean 집사람 (jipsaram).


ဥယျာဉ်

Borrowed from Pali uyyāna, from Sanskrit उद्यान (udyāna, “garden, royal park”).


အနီ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + နီ (ni, “(to be) red”).


သင်္ချာ

Borrowed from Pali saṅkhyā, from Sanskrit संख्या (saṃkhyā).


စန္ဒာ

Borrowed from Pali canda. Doublet of စန္ဒြာ (candra) and စန်း (can:).


လိပ်စာ

my-noun

လိပ်စာ • (lipca)

လိပ် (lip, “writing, address”) + စာ (ca, “writing, letter”).


ကျားမ

Coordinate term: ကျားထီး (kya:hti:)


ခြင်္သေ့မ

/t͡ɕʰɪ̀ɴðḛma̰/

ခြင်္သေ့ (hkrangse., “lion”) + -မ (-ma.)


ခြင်္သေ့ကလေး

/t͡ɕʰɪ̀ɴðḛɡəlé/

ခြင်္သေ့ (hkrangse., “lion”) + ကလေး (ka.le:)


ခြင်္သေ့

→ English: chinthe

Inherited from Old Burmese ခြင်သိယ် (khrangsiy).
Compare Shan သၢင်ႇသီႈ (sàang sīi).


အဖေ့

Induced creaky tone form of အဖေ (a.hpe).


မြင်းမကလေး

/mjɪ́ɴma̰ɡəlé/


ကြောင်ကလေး

/t͡ɕàʊɴɡəlé/


ရည်းစား

ရည်း (rany:, “to aim for, desire”) + စား (ca:) (whether the latter is in the "eat" or "exceed, emphatic particle" sense is unclear, though MED seems to favor the latter).


ဝက်ကြွပ်

ဝက် (wak, “pig”) + ကြွပ် (krwap, “crisp; brittle”)


သံပြိုင်

သံ (sam, “sound”) + ပြိုင် (pruing, “in unison”)


ဖုန်းနံပါတ်

/pʰóʊɴnàɴbaʔ/

ဖုန်း (hpun:) + နံပါတ် (nampat); borrowed from English phone number.


သူငယ်ချင်း

/θəŋɛ̀d͡ʑɪ́ɴ/

သူငယ် (su-ngai, “child”) + -ချင်း (-hkyang:, suffix indicating reciprocity or coequality), thus literally someone with whom one was a child.


ဘတ်စ်ကား

my-noun

ဘတ်စ်ကား • (bhatcka:) (classifier စီး or စင်း)

bhatcka: (romanization)
စီး (classifier)
စင်း (classifier)

Borrowed from English bus + ကား (ka:, “car”).

bus (motor vehicle for transporting large numbers of people along roads)


ကားဂိတ်

ကားဂိတ် • (ka:git)

ကား (ka:, “car”) + ဂိတ် (git, “stop, terminus”). The first element is borrowed from English car; the second from gate in a sense that developed within Burmese. Cognate with English car gate.


လေယာဉ်

လေ (le, “air”) + ယာဉ် (yany, “vehicle”).

လေယာဉ်မယ်

female flight attendant, airline stewardess


မီးရထား

desc

→ Mon: မဳယထာ

→ Mon: မဳယထာ

မီး (mi:, “fire”) + ရထား (ra.hta:, “chariot”). Compare Chinese 火車／火车 (huǒchē).

zh-l

火車／火车 (huǒchē)

train (line of connected cars or carriages)


မြင်းလှည်း

မြင်း (mrang:, “horse”) + လှည်း (hlany:, “cart”)


လက်ဖက်ရည်

လက်ဖက် (lakhpak, “tea plant”) + ရည် (rany, “liquid”).


မုန့်

my-noun

မုန့် • (mun.)

→ Jingpho: muk

→ Shan: မုၼ်း (mún)

Orthographic shift from original မုံံ့. The original meanings appear to be "bread" and "small, minute". Not given etymology by STEDT (mun. "bread"), while Luce adduces Old Chinese 饅 (OC *moːn, “steamed bread”) as cognate.


အပြာ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ပြာ (pra, “blue”).
The "pornographic" sense is a semantic loan from English blue.


အစိမ်း

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + စိမ်း (cim:, “green, raw”).

ghost of a person who died a violent death

(figuratively) tenderfoot, tiro, greenhorn, novice


အဝါ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ဝါ (wa, “yellow”).


အညို

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ညို (nyui, “brown”).


အမည်း

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + မည်း (many:, “black”).


အနက်

desc

→ Shan: ဢၼၢၵ်ႈ (ʼǎ nāak)

→ Shan: ဢၼၢၵ်ႈ (ʼǎ nāak)

From အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + a component နက် (nak) of uncertain origin. STEDT gives no etymology (ə-nak "interpretation of a word, translation, version"), while Luce compares Old Chinese 內 (OC *nuːbs, “interior, inner”) and Tibetan ནང (nang, “internal, inside”); these appear phonetically problematic. A semantic extension of the "depth" sense in Etymology 2 also seems plausible, with shift "depth" > "heart of a matter" > "meaning".


အနက်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + နက် (nak, “deep”).


အနက်

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + နက် (nak, “black”).


အဖြူ

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + ဖြူ (hpru, “white”).


ခါ

(same as အခါ (a.hka)) time (occurrence), duration, period, moment, frequency


ဆရာဝန်

desc

→ Shan: သြႃႇဝုၼ်ႇ (sràa wùn)

→ Shan: သြႃႇဝုၼ်ႇ (sràa wùn)

→ Jingpho: săra wun / tsi săra wun

/sʰa̰jàwʊ̀ɴ/

ဆရာ (hca.ra, “teacher”) + ဝန် (wan, “responsibility”).


တယ်လီဗီးရှင်း

desc

တႄႇလီႇဝီးသျိၼ်း

→ Shan: တႄႇလီႇဝီးသျိၼ်း (tàae lìi wíi sjín)

/tɛ̀lìbíʃɪ́ɴ/


လည်းကောင်း လည်းကောင်း#Burmese

(literary) ditto; Abbreviation of လည်းကောင်း (lany:kaung:).


တက်

oar, paddle (implement used to row a boat)


လမ်းကြား

လမ်း (lam:, “road”) + ကြား (kra:, “between”)


ခရင်း

ခက်ရင်း ခက်ရင်း#Burmese

alternative form of ခက်ရင်း (hkak-rang:, “fork (eating utensil)”)


နာမ်

my-noun

နာမ် • (nam)

Borrowed from Pali nāma, from Sanskrit नामन् (nāman), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁nómn̥. Doublet of နာမ (nama.).


ပြည်သူပြည်သား

/pjìðùpjìðá/

ပြည် (prany, “country”) + -သူ (-su, “person”) + ပြည် (prany) + -သား (-sa:, “resident, inhabitant”)


အစား

အ- (a.-, “nominal prefix”) + စား (ca:, “to eat”)


အစားအစာ

အစား (a.ca:, “food”) + အစာ (a.ca, “food”).