Word.ws English Dictionary

Niger-Congo

Niger-Congo proper noun: a major language family of sub-Saharan Africa noted for the use of a noun class system.

Proper noun

Niger-Congo

  1. A major language family of sub-Saharan Africa noted for the use of a noun class system.

Noun

Niger-Congo (plural Niger-Congos)

  1. A speaker of any Niger-Congo language, or a member of a Niger-Congo culture by ancestry or other affinity.
  2. (broadly) An African descendant of the transatlantic middle passage in the Americas.

Adjective

Niger-Congo (not comparable)

  1. Belonging to the Niger-Congo language family, or pertaining to its associated peoples.

Synonyms of Niger-Congo

Forms of Niger-Congo

pluralNiger-Congos

Origin of Niger-Congo

Coined in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg, from the name of the two principal rivers in the area in which this language family is spoken, the Niger River and the Congo River.

Questions about Niger-Congo

What does Niger-Congo mean?
Niger-Congo means a major language family of sub-Saharan Africa noted for the use of a noun class system.
What part of speech is Niger-Congo?
Niger-Congo can be a proper noun, a noun or an adjective.

Words near Niger-Congo in the dictionary

  1. nigellone
  2. Nigels
  3. niger
  4. Niger seed
  5. Niger seeds
  6. Niger-Congo
  7. Niger-Congos
  8. Niger-Kordofanian
  9. Niger-Saharan
  10. nigeran
  11. Nigeria

Source and license

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