banged

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of bang.

   The loose shutters banged against the wall all night during the storm.

   Someone had banged on the front door for several minutes before we answered.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty: the simple past (the shutter banged) and the past participle after have or in the passive (the door had been banged shut). Because bang covers loud noise, a hard hit, cutting hair squarely across, and vulgar slang for sex or injecting a drug, banged carries every one of those readings. Context decides which is meant, and careful writers avoid letting the slang ones creep in. The same letters also spell the drugged adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having the hair styled in bangs, with the front cut to fall over the forehead.

   Her newly banged hairstyle framed her face and softened her sharp cheekbones.

   Many actresses in the 1960s wore their hair banged straight across the brow.

   Similarfringed

   Note

   A participle turned adjective, born from the verb bang in its barber's meaning: to cut squarely across, as one might crop a horse's tail or a forelock. It can describe the hair itself (a banged hairstyle) or follow a verb like wear (hair worn banged). Here nothing is struck or noisy. The word names a cut, and the straight line across the brow is the whole point.

3. 3
   adjective

   Alternative form of bhanged.

   After sharing a pipe behind the shed, the two cousins were too banged to follow the conversation.

   She stayed banged for hours, smiling vacantly at nothing in particular.

   Note

   Here the h of bhanged has dropped away. The root is bhang, cannabis, though the word stretches to any comparable drug. It names a state, much like drunk or high, and usually follows be, feel, stay or get: they stayed banged for hours. Because this spelling collides with the past tense of bang, bhanged is the clearer choice whenever a sentence could be read either way.

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