ding
Pluraldings, ding
Pluraldings, ding
- 1The high, ringing sound made by a bell or a similar piece of metal.
A bright ding announced that the toaster had finished.
The shopkeeper smiled at the cheerful ding above the door.
Similarchime, ping, ring, tinkle
Note
A word that imitates its own meaning: the bright vowel and ringing -ng copy a small bell, and its fuller cousin is ding-dong. The same echo runs through dinging something into someone and the gamer's ding. The knocking and denting senses come from a different verb, one meaning 'to beat'.
- 2To make a high, ringing sound similar to that of a bell.
The register dinged each time a sale went through.
Service bells ding sharply at the front desk all day.
Similarchime, ping, ring, tinkle
Note
An echo word, made from the sound itself in the same way as ding-dong. It is unrelated to the older ding of striking a blow, which comes from a Germanic verb meaning "to beat." Here nothing is struck as an object: the bell, or the metal, simply dings. Washington Irving's Tales of a Traveller (1824) has a convent bell dinging among mountain echoes. Dickens, in Dombey and Son, has sledgehammers dinging upon iron.
- 3A small dent or chip caused by being struck or knocked against something.
A small ding in the fender lowered the resale price of the truck.
The guitar had picked up a few dings from years of touring.
Similardent, nick, chip, scratch
Note
The blow, not the bell, is behind this one. It descends from Middle English dingen and a Germanic verb meaning 'to beat', so it is a separate word from the imitative ring of a bell despite the identical spelling. Surfers made it a workaday term: Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer (1966) has a ding on a head, and 'ding repair' is routine board maintenance. It names damage small enough to fix, never a wreck.
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- 5
- 6A rejection, especially of an application, request, or candidate.
The startup took the investor's ding as a sign to rethink its pitch.
A string of dings from law schools left her discouraged.
Oppositeacceptance
Note
The no you receive when you have applied for something: a ding letter is the reply that turns you down. It pairs naturally with the verb for rejecting, since a school that dings you sends you a ding. Keep it to casual talk; in formal correspondence the word is rejection.
- 7
- 8To deduct points from someone as a penalty; to penalize.
The reviewer dinged the restaurant for slow service.
Inspectors will ding a kitchen for any sign of poor hygiene.
Similarpenalize, fault, criticize
Note
Small penalties and fees are its territory. A bank dings you three bucks for using a rival's ATM, and Ron Lieber's 2015 piece on paternity leave has employees afraid they will 'get dinged on performance reviews.' The usual frame is ding someone (an amount) for something, and the get-passive comes naturally. It suggests an irritating nick rather than a severe punishment.
- 9To mishit a golf ball.
She dinged her drive off the tee and watched it slice right.
Even strong players ding the occasional shot under pressure.
Note
On the golf course the word names a bad strike rather than a bad result. The contact is off-center or mistimed, so the ball leaves its intended line or loses distance. It takes the ball or the shot as its object, so you ding a drive or an approach. The word belongs to players' talk and stays close in feel to the verb's other striking senses.
- 10In a game, the act of advancing to the next experience level.
Her ding came right as the boss fight ended.
Guildmates flooded the chat with congratulations after his ding.
Note
Gamers named the moment after its sound. Many games mark a new level with a chime, and the event itself became a ding. As a noun it is countable, so you can speak of her first ding or two dings in an evening. It stays in players' casual talk. Outside a game, level-up is the word everyone understands.
- 11To advance to the next experience level in a game.
He dinged twice in a single evening of questing.
Players ding more slowly once they pass the midgame.
Similarlevel
Note
As a verb it takes no object: a character dings; nobody dings a character. It keeps the casual tone of the noun for the moment itself and serves as a clipped stand-in for level up. Its past is always the regular dinged, never the old strong dang.
- 12To throw or hurl something violently; to dash it down.
She dinged the empty bottle into the bin with a crash.
Furious, they ding their helmets to the ground after losing.
Similarhurl, fling, throw, dash, slam
Note
The verb once carried real violence. Milton in Areopagitica (1644) pictures someone who would 'ding the book a coit's distance from him', and Taylor's Works (1630) has a butcher's axe that 'dings deadly downe ten thousand thousand flat.' Here the word means a hurl or a felling blow, not a tap. Modern readers hear the lighter senses first, so in current prose hurl or fling is clearer.
- 13To repeat something insistently so as to impress it on someone, like a bell struck over and over.
She dinged the safety instructions into the new recruits all week.
Parents ding good manners into their children from an early age.
Similardrum, drill, hammer, instill
Note
The bell's monotony became a way of teaching: what is dinged is driven home by repetition. It is built with into, so you ding a lesson into someone, and it carries the listener's weariness with it. Oswald Crawfurd's English Comic Dramatists (1884) catches that complaint: "not keep dinging it, dinging it into one so." The doubled verb sounds like the bell's ringing itself.
- 14Of rain, to come down heavily and without letup, falling with great force.
The forecast says it'll ding on right through the weekend in Glasgow, so the barbecue is off.
It was dinging down so hard overnight that the river by the farm burst its banks.
Similarpour, pelt, teem, bucket
Oppositedrizzle
Note
Scots weather has its own use of the verb: rain or snow that dings on is coming down hard and without letup. Its past is the old strong form dang, as in William Liddle's 'the night turn'd dark an' dang on rain' (1821). MacDonald's Alec Forbes (1876) has 'It's dingin' on, isn't?' Expect on or down after it. Outside Scots writing, pour is the safer choice.
- 15A type of ancient Chinese vessel standing on legs and fitted with a lid.
Archaeologists unearthed a ceremonial ding at the burial site.
The bronze ding bore inscriptions from the Shang dynasty.
Note
A loan from Mandarin dǐng, written 鼎, unrelated to any other ding in English. In English the tone mark is dropped. Archaeologists use it for the legged, lidded cauldron, typically of bronze, that served in ritual offerings and came to stand for state power. The plural is simply dings.
- 16Someone native to Hong Kong's New Territories who is entitled under the Small House Policy to build a village house.
Only a ding can apply for a small-house grant in these villages.
The committee verified that each applicant was a recognized ding.
Note
Borrowed from Cantonese 丁 (ding¹), it marks a legal status more than an ethnic label. Being a ding is what carries the right to a small-house grant. The word belongs to land and planning discussion in Hong Kong, and readers elsewhere will need it explained the first time it appears.
- 17An offensive term for an Italian person, specifically an Italian Australian.
Decades ago, schoolchildren taunted him as a ding for his accent.
She bristled whenever someone in town called her people dings.
Note
An ethnic slur aimed at Italian Australians, tied to Western Australia, and not a word to use. It has no neutral or affectionate sense. It belongs in prose only as quoted language, when reporting how someone was insulted. Anywhere else it simply wounds.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English dingen, from Old English *dingan ("to ding"), from Proto-Germanic *dingwaną ("to beat"), and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *dʰen- ("to beat, push"). It is related to Old Norse dengja ("to hammer") and cognate with Swedish dänga and German dengeln.
Onomatopoeic, imitating the sound; compare ding-dong.
Romanized from Mandarin 鼎 (dǐng).
From Cantonese 丁 (ding¹).