Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In South Africa, a channel formed by the action of water; a ravine; a gully.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Australia A transportable building with single rooms, often used on remote work sites or as tourist accommodation.
- noun South Africa A usually dry, eroded watercourse running only in times of heavy rain.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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We were twelve miles before the main body, and we came to a house under a high bushed hill, with a nullah, which they call a donga, behind it, and an old sangar of piled stones, which they call a kraal, before it.
Traffics and Discoveries Rudyard Kipling 1900
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The descent to the spruit, which is often a short, steep pitch and is then called a donga, needs careful driving, and the ascent up the opposite bank is for a heavy waggon a matter of great difficulty.
Impressions of South Africa James Bryce Bryce 1880
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Under the "fly-in fly-out" roster system, workers can be moved to a different self-contained unit, or "donga", rather than having their own rooms, as they have had in the past.
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Under the "fly-in fly-out" roster system, workers can be moved to a different self-contained unit, or "donga", rather than having their own rooms, as they have had in the past.
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About 1600 workers went on a week-long strike last month, angry about Woodside's plans to make workers from the Gap Ridge campsite at Karratha stay in a different 'donga' each work cycle.
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'donga' or watercourse, and into this plunged a rabble of men, white and black, mules, horses, guns, and waggons.
The True Story Book Andrew Lang 1878
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Another advantage is that rhinos can be more easily removed from dangerous situations, for example if they have fallen asleep in a donga or other difficult terrain after being darted.
Rhino Airlift Photos: Black Rhinoceros Transported To New Home By Air 2011
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For example, Kagulu and Gogo speakers used an indoor * - donga "granary hut."
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As the mounted men scrambled out of the donga, the inGobama-khosi regiment rose from the midst of the grass and, as if on signal, other regiments appeared at wide intervals on either side.
The Gun C. J. Chivers 2010
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And there was poor old Flashy, caught behind the companies of the 24th as they poured their volley-firing into the "chest" of the Zulu army, cheering and shouting for the ammunition-carriers, and Durnford 's bald forehead glinting in the sun above his splendid whiskers as he pulled his men back to the donga and blazed away at the left "horn" sweeping in towards them.
Watershed 2010
yarb commented on the word donga
...but ah, what further hazards lurked before them there, what roughs and bunkers and traps and dog-legged approaches, and dongas and treacherous blind (and nineteenth) holes, and finally, it was to be hoped too, bright fairways; and the ecstacies of bobolinks twittering and bobolinking in the blue, bobbing on the links, or bringing rushes of rollciking song downwind, like imagined tintinnabulating harebells, like tinkling bluebells...
- Malcolm Lowry, October Ferry to Gabriola
July 30, 2008
bilby commented on the word donga
Hmmmm.
July 30, 2008
yarb commented on the word donga
I think Lowry might have in mind the South African English sense of the word, a ditch formed by the erosion of soil (from googling).
July 30, 2008