Ways to say it
| Burmese | Romanization (Wiktionary) | IPA |
|---|---|---|
| န | na. | /na̰/ |
| မိုက် | muik | /maɪʔ/ |
| တုံးတာ | tum:ta | |
| တုံး | tum: | /tóʊɴ/ |
The term describes someone who is lacking in intelligence. You can use တုံး to describe someone being dim-witted or slow to understand, or use the noun ငတုံး to refer to a person as "a dummy" or "a fool".
What does it mean word for word?
The word တုံး literally means "blunt" as one would describe a knife, but it is used metaphorically to describe a person's intelligence. In the noun ငတုံး, the particle င is often used in relation to people.
Which one should you use?
တုံး functions as a colloquial way to say someone is "blunt" or slow to understand things. The form တုံးတာ transforms the adjective into a noun phrase to describe the state of being stupid.
How does it change in a sentence?
Adding the particle တာ to the adjective တုံး turns the quality into a noun phrase, which is often used to describe the state of being stupid, such as "his stupidity".
How do you pronounce it?
/na̰/
Did you know?
- The word မိုက် is also potentially a borrowed term from the English words 'mic' or 'mike'.
Examples in context
- မရူးစမ်းနဲ့။Don't be stupid.This sentence is useful for telling someone not to be stupid using န.Tatoeba #3201466 by sithu015, translation #674479 by yessoos
- နင်က ငတုံးပဲ။You're stupid.This sentence is useful for calling someone a dummy or a fool using န.Tatoeba #8273795 by sithu015, translation #2123495 by CK
- 1 more sentence on Tatoeba
Example conversation
Two friends are discussing a bad decision.
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeမင်း ဘာလို့ အဲ့လိုလုပ်တာလဲ။min bar lo ae lo loat tar lal.Why did you do it like that?
- မင်းမင်း Min Minငါလည်း မသိဘူး။nga lal ma thi bu.I don't know either.
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeမင်း တကယ် နတာပဲ မင်းမင်း။min ta kal na tar pal min min.You are really stupid, Min Min.
- မင်းမင်း Min Minအေးပါ၊ နောက်ဆို သတိထားမယ်။ay par, nauk so tha ti htar mal.Fine, I'll be careful next time.
Sources
- Wiktionary, “stupid” translations and entries န, မိုက်, တုံး, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries တုံး, မိုက်, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Example sentences: Tatoeba CC BY 2.0 FR.
