jantan

Jantan is a term used in Indonesian and Malay to denote the male sex of a species, or masculine traits in humans and animals. It can function as a noun (the male) or as an adjective (masculine). The opposite term is betina, used for the female sex.

In zoology and botany, jantan and betina are standard descriptors: a jantan animal is male; a betina animal is female. In botany, male flowers are described as jantan (staminate) and female flowers as betina (pistillate). The terms are widely used in agriculture and animal husbandry to distinguish sexes.

In everyday Indonesian, jantan is more common in formal, technical, or literary contexts and is less common in casual speech, where laki-laki or pria is used for a man. Jantan is more likely to appear in phrases that emphasize virility or masculine traits, or when distinguishing sexes of animals, such as kambing jantan (male goat), sapi jantan (bull), or kuda jantan (stallion).

Etymology: The word jantan is part of the Indonesian and Malay vocabularies with cognates across the region, and it denotes the male sex and masculine characteristics.