အရူး
a.ru:/ʔəjú/
The Burmese word for "idiot" is အရူး (a.ru:).
While it literally means 'madman', it is commonly used colloquially to call someone an idiot or a fool.
Meaning: person of low general intelligence (noun)
What does it mean word for word?
Literally, အရူး means a madman or a person who is mentally unstable.
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is a.ru:.
Did you know?
- In some traditional Burmese contexts, referring to someone as 'mad' or အရူး was historically linked to spiritual possession rather than just a lack of intelligence.
- The word ရူး can be used as a verb meaning 'to go crazy' with passion or love, transforming the 'idiot' root into a romantic expression.
- Because အရူး can imply actual mental instability, using it towards a stranger in Myanmar can be seen as much more offensive than calling someone an 'idiot' in English.
Examples in context
- သူက အရူးတစ်ယောက်ပဲ။thu ka a yuu ta yout pae.He is an idiot.
- အရူးတွေလို မလုပ်ပါနဲ့။a yuu tway lo ma lote par nae.Don't act like an idiot.
- ဒီလူက အရူးလား။de lu ka a yuu lar?Is this person an idiot?
Example conversation
A man and a woman are talking about a silly mistake a friend made.
- စုစု Su Suသူ ဘာတွေလုပ်နေတာလဲ။thu bar tway lote nay tar lae?What is he doing?
- ကျော်ကျော် Kyaw Kyawသူက အရူးတစ်ယောက်လိုပဲ။thu ka a yuu ta yout lo pae.He is just being an idiot.
- စုစု Su Suတကယ်ကို ရယ်ရတယ်နော်။ta gae ko yel ya tal naw.That is really funny.
- ကျော်ကျော် Kyaw Kyawအေးလေ၊ အရူးပဲ။aye lay, a yuu pae.Yeah, he's an idiot.
Sources
- Pronunciation: Wiktionary entry အရူး, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
