mambo

From Haitian Creole manbo (“voodoo priestess”) (ultimately from Yoruba mambo (“to talk”)), in later senses via Cuban Spanish mambo (“dance”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmæmbəʊ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) enPR: ʹmäm-bō, IPA^(key): /ˈmɑmboʊ/
• Rhymes: -æmbəʊ

mambo (countable and uncountable, plural mambos or mamboes)

1. A voodoo priestess (in Haiti) [from 20th c.]
   • 1985, Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Simon & Schuster, page 47:

     The mambo next presented a container of water to the cardinal points, then poured libations to the centerpost of the peristyle, the axis along which the spirits were to enter.

   • 1995, Karen McCarthy Brown, in Cosentino (ed.), Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, South Sea International Press 1998, p. 219:

     The manbo showed her how to take small handfuls of liquid and spread it on her skin always moving in the upward direction.

   • May 2018, Kyrah Malika Daniels, Whiteness in the Ancestral Waters: Race, Religion, and Conversion within North American Buddhism and Haitian Vodou, The Journal of Interreligious Studies, Issue 23:

     In the 1950s, Ukrainian American filmmaker Maya Deren traveled to Haiti and became initiated as a manbo (priestess) in Haitian Vodou.

2. A Latin-American musical genre, adapted from rumba, originating from Cuba in the 1940s, or a dance or rhythm of this genre. [from 20th c.]

• (voodoo priestess) manbo

• horizontal mambo
• mambo sauce

mambo (third-person singular simple present mambos, present participle mamboing, simple past and past participle mamboed)

1. (intransitive) To perform this dance.

• Mambo (music) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Mambo (dance) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• bammo

mambo

1. chief, king

• Shrum, Jeff (2018) Chuwabo - Portuguese Dictionary‎^[1], SIL International

• IPA^(key): [ˈmambo]

mambo n

1. mambo (dance)

• “mambo”, in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu (in Czech)

From American & Cuban Spanish mambo.

• IPA^(key): /mɑ̃.bo/

mambo m (plural mambos)

1. mambo (music)
2. mambo (dance)

• “mambo”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From American & Cuban Spanish mambo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmam.bo/
• Rhymes: -ambo
• Hyphenation: màm‧bo

mambo m (invariable)

1. mambo (dance and music)

• Rhymes: -ɐ̃bu
• Hyphenation: mam‧bo

From Kimbundu mambu.

mambo m (plural mambos)

1. (Angola, colloquial) thing

   Synonym: coisa

From American & Cuban Spanish mambo.

mambo m (plural mambos)

1. mambo (music)
2. mambo (dance)

Borrowed from Spanish mambo or French mambo.

mambo n (plural mambouri)

1. mambo (music)

From American Spanish, likely from Haitian Creole manbo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmambo/ [ˈmãm.bo]
• Rhymes: -ambo
• Syllabification: mam‧bo

mambo m (plural mambos)

1. mambo (music)
2. mambo (dance)

• “mambo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024

• Audio (Kenya):

  (file)

mambo

1. plural of jambo

mambo

1. (colloquial) how are you?

Probably from Haitian Creole mambo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmambʊ/
• Rhymes: -ambʊ

mambo c

1. (dance) mambo; a type of Latin American dance

Blend of mamma (“mum”) +‎ sambo.

• IPA^(key): (sometimes proscribed) /ˈmambʊ/, /²mamˌbuː/

mambo c

1. (somewhat humorous) a person who still lives with their parents

• For notes on the pronunciation, see the usage notes under the entry sambo.

• sambo
• särbo

• mambo in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• mambo in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)

• bomma