Tango

//ˈtæŋɡoʊ// name, noun, verb, slang

name, noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A standard ballroom dance in 4/4 time; or a social dance, the Argentine tango.
  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of Tango from the NATO/ICAO Phonetic Alphabet. alt-of
  3. 3
    a ballroom dance of Latin-American origin wordnet
  4. 4
    A Spanish flamenco dance with different steps from the Argentine.
  5. 5
    A target; an enemy. US, slang

    "Tango down!"

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    music written in duple time for dancing the tango wordnet
  2. 7
    A piece of music suited to such a dance.
  3. 8
    A dark orange colour shade; deep tangerine
Verb
  1. 1
    To dance the tango.
  2. 2
    dance a tango wordnet
  3. 3
    To mingle or interact (with each other). intransitive, slang

    "Creamy cheese, tangy-sweet peppers, and a hit of heat tango in this sexy deviled-egg combo."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
dancehustlejigtanktare

Example

More examples

"My favorite dance is the tango."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Rioplatense Spanish tango, probably from a Niger-Congo language (compare Ibibio tamgu (“to dance”)).

Etymology 2

From translingual Tango (representing the letter T), from English tango (see above).

Etymology 3

Two main origins: * Borrowed from Italian Tango, probably a patronymic surname from a Germanic personal name. * Borrowed from Japanese 丹後 (Tango), the name of an old province of central Japan.

Related phrases

horizontal tangotango uniformwango tangowhiskey tango foxtrotargentine tangoicao spelling alphabetit takes two to tangonato phonetic alphabet

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.