Word.ws English Dictionary

conga

/ˈkɒŋɡə/US/ˈkɑŋɡə/

conga noun: a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban hand drum of African origin.

conga: a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban hand drum of African origin
Image: Stephan Czuratis ( Jazz-face, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

conga (plural congas)

  1. A tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban hand drum of African origin.
  2. A march of Cuban origin in four-four time in which people form a chain, each holding the hips of the person in front of them; in each bar, dancers take three shuffle steps and then kick alternate legs outwards at the beat; the chain weaves around the place and allows new participants to join the back of the chain.
    • The conga dance, with its long line that might eventually sweep in everybody in the place, and the kick on the fourth beat and the fruited headdress that were to become her trademarks.1979, John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 81–82

Verb

conga (third-person singular simple present congas, present participle congaing, simple past and past participle congaed)

  1. To dance the conga.

Forms of conga

Noun
pluralcongas
Verb
third-person singular presentcongas
present participlecongaing
past participlecongaed
pastcongaed

Plural of conga: congas

Origin of conga

For the dance: * Borrowed from Spanish Congo (“Congo dance”), so-called for being of sub-Saharan African origin.

Words formed from conga

Phrases with conga

Words that rhyme with conga

Questions about conga

What does conga mean?
Conga means a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban hand drum of African origin.
What part of speech is conga?
Conga can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce conga?
Conga is pronounced /ˈkɒŋɡə/ (UK).
What is the plural of conga?
The plural of conga is congas.

Words near conga in the dictionary

  1. confœderation
  2. confœderations
  3. cong
  4. cong you bing
  5. cong.
  6. conga
  7. conga drum
  8. conga line
  9. conga lines
  10. congaed
  11. congaing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: conga (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:

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

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