Word.ws English Dictionary

kanga

kanga noun: a comb, required to be worn at all times by Sikhs, one of the five Ks.

Noun (1)

kanga (plural kangas)

  1. (Sikhism) A comb, required to be worn at all times by Sikhs, one of the five Ks.

Noun (2)

kanga (plural kangas)

  1. A colourful printed cotton garment worn by women in East Africa.

Noun (3)

kanga (plural kangas)

  1. (slang) A prison warder.
    • There are some 32 different terms for prison officers, from the humorously affectionate kanga(rhyming slang:kangaroo = screw) and the variants Scooby-Doo and Dr. Who via the mildly confrontational German (as if still the enemy over 50 years after World War II!) to the outright abuse of shit-parcel.1996, Angela Devlin, Prison Patter, Waterside Press, →ISBN
    • So we thought there'd been trouble over there, maybe all the kangas were getting into mufti.2002, Julian Broadhead, Laura Kerr, Prison Writing: A Collection of Fact, Fiction and Verse, Waterside Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 90

kanga meaning in Marathi

kanga in Marathi

kanga
कंगवा kaṅgvā

Examples of kanga in a sentence

  • The kangas allow me the bottles for my ships.2010 February 4, Michael Arditti, The Enemy of the Good, Quercus Publishing, →ISBN, →OCLC:
  • They will f***ing dangle you, the kangas. [They'll] make it look like suicide.2013, Jonathan Asser, David Mackenzie, Starred Up, spoken by Neville Love (Ben Mendelsohn):
  • Even the diversionary fracas on the far side of the room failed to divert him, although the kangas went racing across to deal with it — there was always some kind of a dust up going on.2017 April 27, Kate Dunn, The Dragonfly, Aurora Metro Publications Ltd., →ISBN, →OCLC:

Forms of kanga

pluralkangas
alternative formkangha

Origin of kanga

From Punjabi ਕੰਘਾ (kaṅghā).

Borrowed from Swahili kanga, from Proto-Bantu *nkángà.

From kangaroo, rhyming slang for screw.

Phrases with kanga

Questions about kanga

What does kanga mean?
Kanga means a comb, required to be worn at all times by Sikhs, one of the five Ks.
What is kanga in Marathi?
Kanga in Marathi is कंगवा (kaṅgvā). See Kanga meaning in Marathi.
How do you use kanga in a sentence?
The kangas allow me the bottles for my ships.
What part of speech is kanga?
Kanga is a noun.
What is the plural of kanga?
The plural of kanga is kangas.

Words near kanga in the dictionary

  1. Kaneshites
  2. Kaneyama
  3. Kanfanar
  4. kang
  5. Kang-wei
  6. kanga
  7. Kanga cricket
  8. Kangabam
  9. Kangal
  10. Kangal Shepherd Dog
  11. Kangal Shepherd Dogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kanga (page history and authors); कंगवा (Marathi) (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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Cite this entry: “kanga.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kanga. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.