mambo

plural mambos · plural mamboes · alternative manbo

1. countableuncountableA voodoo priestess (in Haiti)First known use 20th c.

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

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1985, Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Simon & Schuster, page 47

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

   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

2. countableuncountableA Latin-American musical genre, adapted from rumba, originating from Cuba in the 1940s, or a dance or rhythm of this genre.First known use 20th c.

present singular third person mambos · participle present mamboing · participle past mamboed · past mamboed

1. intransitiveTo perform this dance.