A type of hammer-shaped object or a tool used by African peoples, or a reference to a musical or ceremonial implement.
Likely from a Bantu or Central African language, though the exact etymology is uncertain. It entered English through anthropological and colonial texts describing African tools and instruments.
Words like 'akonge' remind us that European colonizers encountered thousands of tools and cultural items they'd never seen before—sometimes they borrowed the local names, and that's how we know what these objects actually were.
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