English

Noun

1. A transportable building with single rooms, often used on remote work sites or as tourist accomodation.

Etymology

Pronunciation

• italbrac AUS /dɒːŋɡə/, /dɔŋɡə/

Noun

1. A usually dry, eroded watercourse running only in times of heavy rain.

• Morton: In Search of South Africa: 1948. Thousands of miserable cattle and goats roamed everywhere making tracks that would someday form cracks which successive rains would open into gullies and dongas.
• Hornung: Raffles: 1899 (p 301 in 1994 edition). There were trenches for us men, but no place of safety for our horses nearer than this long and narrow donga which ran from within our lines towards those of the Boers.

References

• In geography:
  • Donga, Angola
  • Donga, Nigeria town in Taraba State of Nigeria, inhabited principally by the Chamba Tribe; the traditional head is the "Gara Donga"
  • Donga Department, in Benin
• a form of stick fighting, practiced among the Nilotic Surma people
• Donga, a word in Telugu, meaning "Thief"
• a member of the Dongas road protest group (or "Dongas Tribe") which emerged to resist the destruction of Twyford Down
• Donga, a film in Telugu, starring Chiranjeevi
• In Australian colloquial English, the (human) penis. (More commonly spelt donger).
• In South African English, a Donga is a ditch formed by the erosion of soil.
• In Australian English, sleeping quarters or a portable office building used particularly in the mining and construction industries. Originally a hut or part of a hut, now also a bedroom in an air-conditioned building. Possibly from Papua New Guinea, where donga means ‘house’.
• In Australian English, "the donga" refers to the outback or a barren and particularly remote area, or to a collection of plant life in a desert area.
• A makeshift device used to mask the smell of smoke.