Word.ws English Dictionary

panga

/ˈpaŋɡə/

panga noun: a large broad-bladed knife.

Noun (1)

panga (plural pangas)

  1. (Africa, East, South Africa) A large broad-bladed knife.
    • She turned to the small basket she was carrying and took out a panga.1967, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat, EAEP, published 2008, page 77
    • Charlie had told me what it had looked like immediately after the riots. Bodies hacked to pieces with pangas.1978, André Brink, Rumours of Rain, Vintage, published 2000, page 73

Noun (2)

panga (plural pangas)

  1. Any of various edible freshwater fish of the genus Pangasius, native to southeast Asia, especially an iridescent shark, Pangasius hypophthalmus, now reclassified as Pangasianodon hypophthalmus.
  2. A type of modest-sized, open, outboard-powered, fishing boat common throughout much of the developing world, including Central America, the Caribbean, parts of Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia.

Noun (3)

panga (plural pangas)

  1. A small inflatable motorboat used in Latin America.

panga meaning in Tamil

panga in Tamil

நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும்

Forms of panga

pluralpangas

Origin of panga

Borrowed from Swahili panga (“machete”).

Back-formation from the plural, from the stem of translingual Pangasius (genus name), from Bengali পাঙ্গাশ (paṅgaś, “mud- or brown-coloured fish”).

Borrowed from Spanish panga (“motorboat”).

Questions about panga

What does panga mean?
Panga means a large broad-bladed knife.
What is panga in Tamil?
Panga in Tamil is நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும். See Panga meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is panga?
Panga is a noun.
How do you pronounce panga?
Panga is pronounced /ˈpaŋɡə/.
What is the plural of panga?
The plural of panga is pangas.

Words near panga in the dictionary

  1. pang khao mahk
  2. pang of conscience
  3. pang sai
  4. pang seh
  5. Pang-pu
  6. panga
  7. panga panga
  8. Pangabugan
  9. Pangaea
  10. Pangaea II
  11. Pangaea Proxima

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: panga (page history and authors); panga (Tamil Wiktionary) (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-panga.wav.

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