berdache
Americannoun
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But in the next 20 years, undisputed evidence of woman marriages, berdache marriages and other same-sex unions across dozens of cultures upended that definition.
From Washington Post • Jun. 19, 2015
What a berdache is, basically, is someone who adopts a gender other than their biological one.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Navajo have a category of person they call a berdache.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
