Word.ws English Dictionary

dingolay

Syllables: din·go·lay/ˈdɪŋɡəʊleɪ/US/ˈdɪŋɡoʊleɪ/

dingolay verb: to perform a kind of lively dance with hand movements.

Verb

dingolay (third-person singular simple present dingolays, present participle dingolaying, simple past and past participle dingolayed)

  1. (Caribbean, intransitive) To perform a kind of lively dance with hand movements.
    • Believe me, friends, if I were King / I'd marry any woman and give her a ring, / I wouldn't give a damn what the people say / So long as she can wash, cook, and dingolay. [Commenting on the abdication of Edward VIII.]1937, Arnold Gingrich, editor, Esquire: The Magazine for Men, volume 8, Chicago, Ill.: Esquire, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 109; also quoted in Catherine A. Sunshine, “Caribbean Unity, the Frustrated...
    • Hands clapped, feet tapped, bodies dingolayed.1945, Glanville [Wyncoop] Smith, Many a Green Isle, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, →OCLC, page 268

Examples of dingolay in a sentence

  • "Madam, we have a way to say when somebody can walk well, we say they dingolay well." Pamela laughed.c. 1970–1980, D. W. Rogers, Lalaja, a Tale of Retribution, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago: Frasers Printerie, →OCLC, page 164:
  • Inez come leh we jam for Crop Over Festival, come leh we dingolay1999, Elizabeth F. Watson, From “Ma Boy” to a King: John King, 1982–1998: An Annotated Discography of Popular Music from Barbados, Saint...
  • The crowd was wild as she "dingolayed" to get the attention of the male lead singer.2010, Annette Osborne, “Roses for Grandma”, in … As a Tale That Is Told, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, section 5 (Jascmin), page 139:
  • It is this creature [the human being], peculiarly constituted and uniquely called, that God dingolays and improvises with, in order to draw the created order toward its liberating telos.2013, Eric G. Flett, “Dingolayin’: Theological Notes for a Caribbean Theology”, in Garnett Roper, J. Richard Middleton, editors, A Kairos...

Forms of dingolay

third-person singular presentdingolays
present participledingolaying
past participledingolayed
pastdingolayed

Origin of dingolay

From Kongo dyengula (“to gyrate the waist while dancing”), possibly from French dégringoler (“to fall down, tumble”).

Questions about dingolay

What does dingolay mean?
Dingolay means to perform a kind of lively dance with hand movements.
How do you use dingolay in a sentence?
"Madam, we have a way to say when somebody can walk well, we say they dingolay well." Pamela laughed.
What part of speech is dingolay?
Dingolay is a verb.
How do you pronounce dingolay?
Dingolay is pronounced /ˈdɪŋɡəʊleɪ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of dingolay?
The past tense of dingolay is dingolayed.

Words near dingolay in the dictionary

  1. dingo-stiffener
  2. dingo-stiffeners
  3. dingoed
  4. dingoes
  5. dingoing
  6. dingolay
  7. dingolayed
  8. dingolaying
  9. dingolays
  10. dingonek
  11. dingoneks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dingolay (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-dingolay.wav.

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