ကန်တော့

Burmese

Etymology

Inherited from Old Burmese ဂေါဓော (go: dho:). According to ʾU Phoh Lat, the word is ultimately borrowed from Middle Chinese 叩頭 (MC khuwX duw, “to kowtow; to act submissively”). Compare Shan ၵၼ်ႇတေႃး (kàn táu) and Old Mon ကိန္ဒောအ် (kindo:ʔ).[1]

The current spelling is due to the traditional folk etymology that the act of obeisance is meant to dispel bad karma or misfortunes.

Pronunciation

  • Phonetic respelling: ဂန်'ဒေါ့
  • IPA(key): /ɡədɔ̰/
  • Romanization: MLCTS: kantau. • ALA-LC: kanʻtoʹ • BGN/PCGN: gădaw. • Okell: kătó

Verb

ကန်တော့ • (kantau.)

  1. to pay obeisance with one's hands clasped palm to palm and raised to touch one's forehead; to perform a wai
  2. to present a gift in respect and gratitude

Derived terms

References

  1. ^ မြန်မာစကားအဖွင့်ကျမ်း-ပထမတွဲ (in Burmese), 1962

Further reading

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.