A historical term from the Ottoman Empire for a young male companion or servant, sometimes with romantic connotations; a catamite.
From Ottoman Turkish bardaş, related to Turkish 'barda' (comrade). The word entered European languages through diplomatic and travel accounts from the 16th-18th centuries, reflecting encounters with Ottoman customs.
This word reveals how different cultures had openly acknowledged categories for relationships that Victorian Europeans found so scandalous they could only whisper about them in Greek and Latin!
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