cargo cult
cargo cult noun: any of several religious movements among the people of Melanesia that anticipate the arrival of material cargo or cultural restoration, typically through the ritual imitation of the activities of colonial or technological cultures.
Noun
cargo cult (plural cargo cults)
- Any of several religious movements among the people of Melanesia that anticipate the arrival of material cargo or cultural restoration, typically through the ritual imitation of the activities of colonial or technological cultures.
- Any of several philosophies, practices or pseudosciences that are not rooted in experiment, often characterized by an unreflected and ritualistic approach.
- cargo cult science
- cargo cult software engineering
Forms of cargo cult
| plural | cargo cults |
|---|
Origin of cargo cult
From cargo (“Western material goods”) + cult. First used in print by N. M. Bird in an article in 1945.
Words formed from cargo cult
Questions about cargo cult
- What does cargo cult mean?
- Cargo cult means any of several religious movements among the people of Melanesia that anticipate the arrival of material cargo or cultural restoration, typically through the ritual imitation of the activities of colonial or technological cultures.
- What part of speech is cargo cult?
- Cargo cult is a noun.
- What is the plural of cargo cult?
- The plural of cargo cult is cargo cults.
Words near cargo cult in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cargo cult (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “cargo cult.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cargo_cult. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.