Tango

How to spell tango

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tango

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tango mean?

1. nounA ballroom dance of Latin American origin, marked by dramatic, gliding steps and sharp turns, or the music written for it.
2. verbTo perform the tango with a partner.

Tango in a sentence

• noun

  The couple won the regional tango competition after months of evening lessons.

• verb

  They learned to tango together for their wedding reception.

• noun

  The band played a slow tango while the guests filled the floor.

• verb

  He could waltz easily but struggled to tango in proper rhythm.

Where does tango come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

The word arrived in English in the early 1900s straight from Latin American Spanish, where 'tango' named both a lively partner dance and the music that drives it. The dance grew up in the working-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo in the late nineteenth century, blending European, African, and local rhythms. The deeper origin of the Spanish word is genuinely debated: many scholars trace it to an African language of the enslaved communities of the region, where a related term referred to a gathering place or a drum, while others link it to the Spanish verb 'tañer', meaning to play or strum an instrument. Because the word was adopted intact, English kept the simple Spanish spelling, and the 'g' is always pronounced hard, never soft. The familiar phrase about it taking two people to tango cemented the word in everyday English and helped fix its easy four-letter ending.

How the word is built

• tango (single root, borrowed whole from Spanish; no internal prefix or suffix)