▪ I. bongo1
(ˈbɒŋgəʊ)
[Cf. Bangi mbangani, Lingala mongu.]
An antelope, Boocercus eurycerus, found in central Africa, from Sierra Leone to Kenya.
| 1861 P. B. Du Chaillu Equat. Afr. xvi. facing p. 306 (caption) The Bongo Antelope... The chief features of the animal are the stripes on each side. 1902 O. Thomas in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. X. 309 No evidence as yet exists as to whether the true western Bongo has horns in the female. 1910 Westm. Gaz. 1 Mar. 11/1 Next come nine white rhinoceroses and a couple of bongos, a specimen of the latter animal never before having fallen to the gun of a white man. 1911 Roosevelt in Ld. Charnwood T. Roosevelt (1923) 243 He had killed a bongo, a bull. 1958 E. S. Warner Silk-Cotton Tree xvii. 175 The chiefs..were announced..with great blasts blown on bongo horns. 1964 E. P. Walker et al. Mammals of World II. 1418/1 Bongos live in the densest, most tangled parts of the forest. |
▪ II. bongo2 orig. U.S.
(ˈbɒŋgəʊ)
Pl. bongo(e)s.
[Amer. Sp. bongó.]
One of a pair of small (Cuban) drums, usu. held between the knees and played with the fingers; in full bongo drum.
| 1920 J. Hergesheimer San Cristóbal de la Habana 232 My head filled with the resonant bos and bongos of ñañiguismo. 1928 Vanity Fair Nov. 72 A fashionable evening event along the Havana water-front is a concert by black boys with their primitive instruments, the bongó..and claves. 1934 S. R. Nelson All about Jazz 167 Then we have the Bongos, which are a kind of tom-tom, used in pairs. 1952 New Yorker 1 Nov. 6/2 Candido, whose peculiar fancy is bongo drums. 1956 Ibid. 11 Feb. 92/2 She's been doing her calypso act—with bongo accompaniment—since 1941. |