Kongo

American  

[kong-goh] / ˈkɒŋ goʊ /

noun

Kongos plural

1. a member of an Indigenous people living in west-central Africa along the lower course of the Congo River.

2. Also called Kikongo.  the Bantu language of the Kongo people, used as a lingua franca in the lower Congo River basin.

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Kongo British  

/ ˈkɒŋɡəʊ /

noun

1. 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

2. the language of this people, belonging to the Bantu group of the Niger-Congo family

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Example Sentences

"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

This last tradition is possibly derived from enslaved Yoruba and Kongo people living in Texas at the time, for whom the color red represents spiritual power, culinary historian Michael Twitty writes in his blog Afroculinaria.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 17, 2023

Yet, the four classical elements are one of civilization’s great unifiers, a cosmological theory shared by the Hindu Vedas, the Buddhist Mahabhuta, the Kongo cosmogram, the Indigenous medicine wheel and the zodiac.

From New York Times • Jun. 15, 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