Definition of mpingo in English:
mpingo
nounPlural mpingos (ə)mˈpɪŋɡəʊ
An East African leguminous tree with dense black timber which is used for carvings and musical instruments.
Dalbergia melanoxylon, family Leguminosae
Example sentencesExamples
- The group organises both large-scale replanting of the mpingo tree by community volunteers and youth education on conservation in primary and secondary schools.
- The mpingo that I use to make my clarinets is from Mozambique, which is more reddish in color than Tanzanian mpingo.
- Like ebony, mpingo is also a heavy, dense black hardwood, and it is plentiful in East Africa.
- Various national measures have been taken to protect mpingo in countries where it occurs.
- The GoodWood Campaign hopes to promote a tree nursery for each carver cooperative that will grow these alternative woods to halt the use of the scarce supply of mpingo left in Kenya.
- Far from corrupting Makonde sculpting, the shift to mpingo - with its dense grain - allowed artists to advance their technical skills and to obtain finely detailed results.
- Until recently, southern Tanzania was relatively isolated and its population of mpingo mostly unscathed.
- His photos of the sculptor cutting down an mpingo tree and sculpting a piece of root wood, and his image of a group of sculptors at work beneath an enormous mango tree, are remarkable.
- It is feared that the continued uncontrolled exploitation of the mpingo tree will cause it to become commercially extinct within a few decades.