Word.ws English Dictionary

macumba

Syllables: ma·cum·ba

macumba noun: a type of Afro-Brazilian folk religion combining elements of Roman Catholicism with traditional African religious beliefs and practices; or a specific cult or ceremony of such religion.

Noun

macumba (plural macumbas)

  1. A type of Afro-Brazilian folk religion combining elements of Roman Catholicism with traditional African religious beliefs and practices; or a specific cult or ceremony of such religion.
    • And later on at the Gantóis macumba, Omolu, bedecked in red, had said that the day of vengeance for the poor would not be long in coming.1988, Jorge Amado, translated by Gregory Rabassa, Captains of the Sands, Penguin, published 2013, page 79

Forms of macumba

pluralmacumbas

Origin of macumba

Borrowed from Portuguese macumba (“macumba; curse”), derived from Kimbundu makôba (or a related Bantu language of western Central Africa).

Questions about macumba

What does macumba mean?
Macumba means a type of Afro-Brazilian folk religion combining elements of Roman Catholicism with traditional African religious beliefs and practices; or a specific cult or ceremony of such religion.
What part of speech is macumba?
Macumba is a noun.
What is the plural of macumba?
The plural of macumba is macumbas.

Words near macumba in the dictionary

  1. maculopathies
  2. maculopathy
  3. maculose
  4. maculosin
  5. maculous
  6. macumba
  7. macumbas
  8. Macun
  9. Macupa
  10. Macupit
  11. Macushi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: macumba (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: “macumba.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/macumba. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.