köken: There are cognates in Tho lects, e.g. Cuối Tân Hợp Ɂiew³⁵ (Nguyễn Hữu Hoành et al., 2022), with the meaning of "beautiful, pretty". Considering its cognates' meaning, the Vietnamese verb is probably a semantic extension of adjectival Chinese 妖 (yêu, “charming”) as seen in yêu kiều (妖嬌, “charming, graceful”).