Word.ws English Dictionary

abeng

/əˈbɛŋ/US/əˈbɛŋ/

abeng noun: an animal (usually bull) horn used by the Maroon people of Jamaica as a musical instrument; and also (historical) formerly by slaveholders to summon slaves to canefields and by the Maroon army to communicate cryptic messages over great distances.

Noun

abeng (plural abengs)

  1. (Jamaica) An animal (usually bull) horn used by the Maroon people of Jamaica as a musical instrument; and also (historical) formerly by slaveholders to summon slaves to canefields and by the Maroon army to communicate cryptic messages over great distances.

Forms of abeng

pluralabengs

Origin of abeng

Borrowed from Jamaican Creole abeng, from Akan abɛŋ (“animal horn; wind instrument”) (Twi).

Questions about abeng

What does abeng mean?
Abeng means an animal (usually bull) horn used by the Maroon people of Jamaica as a musical instrument; and also (historical) formerly by slaveholders to summon slaves to canefields and by the Maroon army to communicate cryptic messages over great distances.
What part of speech is abeng?
Abeng is a noun.
How do you pronounce abeng?
Abeng is pronounced /əˈbɛŋ/ (UK).
What is the plural of abeng?
The plural of abeng is abengs.

Words near abeng in the dictionary

  1. abending
  2. abendmusik
  3. abendmusiken
  4. abends
  5. Abendstern
  6. abeng
  7. abengs
  8. Abenlen
  9. Abenlens
  10. Abenomics
  11. Abenonitae

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: abeng (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-abeng.wav.

Cite this entry: “abeng.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abeng. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.