tonga
1 Americannoun
noun
noun
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a member of a Negroid people of S central Africa, living chiefly in Zambia and Zimbabwe
-
the language of this people, belonging to the Bantu group of the Niger-Congo family
noun
noun
Etymology
Origin of tonga
First recorded in 1870–75, tonga is from the Hindi word tāṅgā
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:
I suppose their might be a risk of some of the potential GB players competing for their home countries - tonga, samoa, south africa, new zealand, holland etc. but i'm sure it'll be good.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 7, 2012
"Na, na, damchee, na, na, damchee! " wailed the tongawalla to a British officer, who was trying to rent his two-wheeled tonga at an air base in India.
From Time Magazine Archive
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He was to see my family driven quietly over to Sumbalpar in the tonga.
From McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893 by Various
The Thakur put his head out of the tonga and spoke shrilly in Mewari.
From From Sea to Sea Letters of Travel by Rudyard Kipling
There was a consultation and an examination of the wheel, but the whole tonga was rotten, and the axle was smashed and the axle pins were bent and nearly red-hot.
From From Sea to Sea Letters of Travel by Rudyard Kipling
Nominated by Tonga, A-Baki has strong Gulf connections having served as Ecuador's ambassador to Qatar.
From Barron's ● Aug. 21, 2026
The second encounter occurred during a 2024 expedition to the Tonga Trench aboard the R/V Dagon as part of the Inkfish Open Ocean Expedition, led by scientists from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Center.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 8, 2026
Tonga Nolan grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood on the north side of Baton Rouge and remembers it fondly as a tight-knit community.
From Salon ● May 10, 2026
England's first match at the Rugby World Cup, a pool-stage meeting with Tonga in Brisbane, is less than 16 months away.
From BBC ● May 5, 2026
Unlike her own village, Efifi was a mixture of Shona, Tonga, and Matabele, with one Afrikaner thrown in.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
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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.