berdache

American  

[ber-dash] / bərˈdæʃ /

noun

1. Older Use: Sometimes Offensive. two-spirit.

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Etymology

Origin of berdache

First recorded in 1800–10; from North American French; French bardache “catamite,” from South Italian bardassa, bardascia “boy, young man,” posssibly from Arabic bardaj “captive,” from Persian bardah, wardag

Example Sentences

They were mainly referring to “berdache” marriages, in which a man would marry another man who performed domestic duties or a woman would marry a woman who worked outside the home.

From Washington Post

The Navajo have a category of person they call a berdache.

From Literature

What a berdache is, basically, is someone who adopts a gender other than their biological one.

From Literature

The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as "two-spirit" people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as "berdache" by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word "bardaj", meaning an intimate male friend.

From The Guardian

Because of this tradition of respect, in the 90s many gay and lesbian Native American activists in the United States and Canada rejected the French word berdache in favour of the term two-spirit people to describe themselves.

From The Guardian