What does “cangaço” mean in Brazilian Portuguese?

Cangaço is the name for the roving armed banditry of Brazil’s Northeastern backlands, running from the nineteenth century until around 1940, and its fighters were cangaceiros: crescent leather hats, rifles, a semi-nomadic life in the sertão. The most famous of them, Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, is known as Lampião, “the King of the Cangaço.” The word comes from canga, the wooden yoke laid across oxen — the load a cangaceiro hauled from camp to camp.

For a learner it is a key that opens a genre: cangaço films, cordel poetry, songs and TV series lean on it much the way English-language culture leans on the Wild West, so the word surfaces far from any history lesson. This list of Brazilian series includes Cangaço Novo, a modern heist story that borrows the name outright.