pings

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of ping.

   A burst of pings rang out as messages flooded the group chat.

   The technician logged dozens of pings to measure the network delay.

   Note

   One plural covers very different things: sharp metallic sounds, sonar pulses, network packets, nudging messages and markers dropped on a game map. Each of these is a countable event, so dozens of pings reads naturally. The latency sense is a measurement rather than an event, so it sits awkwardly in the plural. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, which means a burst of pings and the server pings use different words.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of ping.

   The server pings each device to check whether it is still online.

   She pings the team lead whenever a deployment fails overnight.

   Note

   Here the form carries the verb's full range, and most of it takes an object. A server pings a host, a manager pings a colleague, and in colloquial speech someone pings a bra strap, flicking it so it snaps back. The colloquial "bounce" sense is the exception. It is intransitive: something pings off a surface, and nothing receives the action.

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