say it: SAHM-buh
samba is a noun and verb meaning "large west African tree having large palmately lobed leaves and axillary cymose panicles of small white flowers and one-winged seeds; yields soft white to pale yellow wood". It carries 5 recorded senses.
large west African tree having large palmately lobed leaves and axillary cymose panicles of small white flowers and one-winged seeds; yields soft white to pale yellow wood
music composed for dancing the samba
a lively ballroom dance from Brazil
a form of canasta using three decks of cards and six jokers
dance the samba
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for samba come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.