Taunggyi

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A city in eastern Myanmar, serving as the capital of Shan State and set on a plateau in the hills
2. The principal town of Shan State in Myanmar, located on a highland plateau in the country's east
3. A place name referring to a city in the Shan hills of eastern Myanmar that is the regional administrative centre

Etymology: Taunggyi is the name of a town in eastern Shan State, Myanmar, and the English word for it was borrowed directly from Burmese, where the name is written တောင်ကြီး and pronounced roughly "taung-kri:". Read literally, the Burmese means "big mountain" or "great hill": "taung" is a hill or mountain, and "kri:" means large or great. The English form simply carries that Burmese spelling into Roman letters, so the name reaches English unchanged in meaning. The town sits on a high plateau in the Shan Hills, which explains why its name describes a hill rather than a settlement. Because the word is a place name, its use in English is confined to referring to that town and, by extension, things named after it.