Kongo
Americannoun
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Kongos,
plural
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Kongo
plural
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a member of an Indigenous people living in west-central Africa along the lower course of the Congo River.
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Also called Kikongo. the Bantu language of the Kongo people, used as a lingua franca in the lower Congo River basin.
noun
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a member of a Negroid people of Africa living in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre), Congo Brazzaville, and Angola
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the language of this people, belonging to the Bantu group of the Niger-Congo family
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Last Fourth of July, the company’s system deterred more than 20,000 people in the U.S. from booking an entire home listing on Airbnb, according to company spokesperson Ruthie Kongo.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
"Plastic pollution has reached alarming levels," said Vincent Kunda, head of Kongo River, an NGO which raises awareness of the scourge.
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
Among the faithful was Clément L’onde, who travelled from Kisantu, a town in the province of Central Kongo, more than 150 kilometers from Kinshasa.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 1, 2023
King Afonso of Kongo told the king of Portugal that, out of a desire for European goods, the people of his own kingdom were capturing their fellow Kongolese and selling them to Portuguese traders.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
Impressed as they were with the Kingdom of Kongo, the Europeans were dismayed to find no commodity agriculture here.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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Yet as much as the Kongos value tradition, their firm has survived by being flexible.
From Time Magazine Archive
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The men said they must consider the matter, and went away to drink water, as the Kongos say.
From An African Adventure by Isaac Frederick Marcosson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.