Word.ws English Dictionary

ronko

ronko noun: a traditional loose-fitting knee-length garment worn by chiefs, blacksmiths, warriors, and secret society officials in certain tribes of Sierra Leone, particularly the Limba, Koranko, and Yalunka, and said to protect against both natural and supernatural weapons when worn in battle.

Noun

ronko (plural ronkos)

  1. A traditional loose-fitting knee-length garment worn by chiefs, blacksmiths, warriors, and secret society officials in certain tribes of Sierra Leone, particularly the Limba, Koranko, and Yalunka, and said to protect against both natural and supernatural weapons when worn in battle.
    • Many campaign posters showed candidates wearing "ronkos," or rust-colored cotton vests bathed in special herbs to guard them against invisible bullets.1986 June 29, Associated Press, "Secret Societies Thriving," Sunday Intelligencer (Doylestown, Pennsylvania), page A-18 http://www.newspaperarchive.com/PdfViewer.aspx?img=26962689
    • The same mural shows a government soldier, called 'Commando Spider', dressed in a ronko, but slaying a rebel, presumably behind enemy lines.1994, Joseph A. Opala, "'Ecstatic Renovation!': Street Art Celebrating Sierra Leone's 1992 Revolution," African Affairs 93(317), 210...

Forms of ronko

pluralronkos

Origin of ronko

From the Limba word hu-ronko.

Questions about ronko

What does ronko mean?
Ronko means a traditional loose-fitting knee-length garment worn by chiefs, blacksmiths, warriors, and secret society officials in certain tribes of Sierra Leone, particularly the Limba, Koranko, and Yalunka, and said to protect against both natural and supernatural weapons when worn in battle.
What part of speech is ronko?
Ronko is a noun.
What is the plural of ronko?
The plural of ronko is ronkos.

Words near ronko in the dictionary

  1. roniviruses
  2. Ronja
  3. ronk
  4. ronked
  5. ronking
  6. ronko
  7. Ronkonkoma
  8. ronkos
  9. ronks
  10. ronna-
  11. ronnabit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ronko (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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