Word.ws English Dictionary

pingos

pingos is the plural of pingo.

Meaning of pingo

Noun (1)

pingo (plural pingoes or pingos)

  1. A conical mound of earth with an ice core caused by permafrost uplift, particularly if lasting more than a year.
    • The greatest variation in cover thickness, as determined from collapsed pingos, is in irregularly shaped pingos, or those with asymmetrically located ice-cores.1963, J[ohn] Ross Mackay, The Mackenzie Delta Area, N.W.T. (Memoir (Geographical Branch, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Canada); 8), Ottawa, Ont.: Department of Mines and Technical...
    Synonyms:
    hydrolaccolith

Noun (2)

pingo (plural pingoes or pingos)

  1. (Sri-Lanka, dated) A flexible pole supported on one shoulder, with a load suspended from each end.
    • This done, he [an elephant] took up the pingo and moved away from the spot; but at the distance of about a fathom or two, laid it down again, and ripping open one of the bundles, took out of it all the contents, somans [footnote: Woman's robe], cambāyas [footnote: The figured cloth worn by men]...1861, J[ames] Emerson Tennent, “Appendix to Chapter III. Narratives of the Natives of Ceylon Relative to Encounters with Rogue Elephants.”, in Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon with...
  2. (Sri-Lanka, dated) A measure of weight equivalent to that which can be carried using a pingo, perhaps about 55 pounds (25 kilograms) (see the 2013 quotation).
    • Upon reaching this quantity, the tribute decreased one pingo annually until the number was reduced to five.1833, “The Chaliah Caste in Ceylon”, in The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, page 275
    Synonyms:
    picul

Questions about pingos

What is pingos the plural of?
Pingos is the plural of pingo.

Words near pingos in the dictionary

  1. Pinglo
  2. Pinglu
  3. Pingluo
  4. pingo
  5. pingoes
  6. pingos
  7. pingpeisaponin
  8. pingpong
  9. Pingqiao
  10. Pingrang
  11. pingrass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pingos (page history and authors); pingo (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: “pingos.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pingos. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.