mambo

Meanings

Noun

• A voodoo priestess (in Haiti)
• A Latin-American musical genre, adapted from rumba, originating from Cuba in the 1940s, or a dance or rhythm of this genre.

Verb

• To perform this dance.

Origin

• From Haitian Creole mambo ("voodoo priestess") (ultimately from Yoruba mambo ("to talk")), in later senses via Cuban Spanish mambo.