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pongo

pongo noun: a soldier.

pongo: a soldier
Image: Carlos Correa Loyola, CC BY-SA 3.0 ec, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

pongo (plural pongos or pongoes)

  1. (UK, slang) A soldier.
  2. (UK, slang) A lazy, good-for-nothing person.
  3. (archaic) Any large ape.
    • […] asserts, that the apes called pongos, "kill many negroes that travel in the woods." […] [Regarding] pongos belabouring [i.e. beating] elephants, [he adds] that "a pongo ape carried off a young negro, […]"1871, Charles Waterton, Essays on Natural History..., page 158
    • […] Pongos are never taken alive, owing to their strength, which is so great that ten men cannot hold one of them. The young Pongos hang upon their mother's belly, with their hands clasped about her. Many of the young ones are taken by […]1876, Richard Francis Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, page 239

Noun (2)

pongo (plural pongos)

  1. A river canyon or gorge in Peru, especially a narrow, deep one cutting through a ridge or mountain range, carved by an Andean river.
    • The result is again clearly shown in the topography of the valley wall which becomes bold, inclosing the river in narrow "pongos" or canyons filled with huge bowlders^([sic]) and dangerous rapids.1916, Isaiah Bowman, The Andes of Southern Peru, page 237
    • [page 202:] Below the pongo, the Marañon is easily navigable […]
    • [page 203:] Above the pongo, the river is sometimes referred to as the Vilcanota, but below it is always the Urubamba. The Pongo de Mainique is another magnificent landmark in Peru […]1964, David A. Robinson, Peru in Four Dimensions

Examples of pongo in a sentence

  • […] regarded the jockos, pongos, and orangs as animals all belonging to one species.1886, Robert Hartmann, Anthropoid apes, page 8:
  • They—the pongos, the gorilla, the tschiego, and the chimpanzee—cannot be treated as animals, but must be associated with as men, […]1896, Alfred Edmund Brehm, From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes ..., page 311:
  • The river is relatively calm afterwards (though there are still some rapids) but there are few settlements until you reach the oil town of Sapahua, about two to four days beyond the pongo.1987, Peru, a Travel Survival Kit, volume 1, page 221:
  • A member of the South American Explorers says that the trip to Atalaya is difficult on public transport because there are few boats between the pongo and Sepahua.2000, Rob Rachowiecki, Peru, page 294

Forms of pongo

pluralpongos
pluralpongoes

Origin of pongo

From Kongo mpongo (“gorilla”).

From Peruvian Spanish [Term?], thought to be from Quechua puncu/punku or Aymara ponco "door, gate". Semantically, compare puerta.

Questions about pongo

What does pongo mean?
Pongo means a soldier.
How do you use pongo in a sentence?
[…] regarded the jockos, pongos, and orangs as animals all belonging to one species.
What part of speech is pongo?
Pongo is a noun.
What is the plural of pongo?
The plural of pongo is pongos.

Words near pongo in the dictionary

  1. pongier
  2. pongiest
  3. ponginess
  4. ponging
  5. Ponglish
  6. pongo
  7. pongoes
  8. Pongol
  9. pongos
  10. Pongratz
  11. Pongratzes

Source and license

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