Word.ws English Dictionary

milonga

milonga noun: a form of music originating in Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil.

Noun

milonga (countable and uncountable, plural milongas)

  1. A form of music originating in Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil.
    • In “Gath & Chaves,” a section named after a department store, women pose as mannequins but come to life to dance a tango, a waltz, a milonga and, finally, a mystifying number called “Hound Dog.”2007 January 26, Gia Kourlas, “Watching a History Lesson That’s Told Through Tango”, in New York Times
  2. A dance which accompanies this music.

Forms of milonga

pluralmilongas

Origin of milonga

Borrowed from Spanish milonga, in turn from Brazilian Portuguese milonga (“chant”). Theories connect the word to the nineteenth century slave trade between South America and Africa. The ultimate source is unknown, but may relate to Kimbundu mulonga (“word”), or Kongo nlonga or Punu mulonga (“line, row”) in reference to dancers.

Words formed from milonga

Questions about milonga

What does milonga mean?
Milonga means a form of music originating in Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil.
What part of speech is milonga?
Milonga is a noun.
What is the plural of milonga?
The plural of milonga is milongas.

Words near milonga in the dictionary

  1. milometer
  2. milometers
  3. Milon
  4. Milone
  5. Milones
  6. milonga
  7. milongas
  8. milonguero
  9. milongueros
  10. milor
  11. milord

Source and license

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