Pang
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A paroxysm of extreme physical pain or anguish; a feeling of sudden and transitory agony; a throe. in-plural, often
"War[wick]. See how the pangs of death do make him grin. / Sal[isbury]. Diſturbe him not, let him paſſe peaceably."
- 2 a sudden sharp feeling wordnet
- 3 A sudden sharp feeling of an emotional or mental nature, as of joy or sorrow. in-plural, often
"He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it."
- 4 a sharp spasm of pain wordnet
- 5 a mental pain or distress wordnet
- 1 To cause to have great pain or suffering; to torment, to torture. transitive
"Yet if that quarrell, Fortune, to diuorce / It from the bearer, 'tis a ſufferance, panging / As ſoule and bodies ſeuering."
- 2 simple past of ping form-of, nonstandard, past
- 1 A surname from Chinese.
- 2 A minor river in Berkshire, England, which flows into the Thames at Pangbourne.
- 3 A surname from Khmer.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"For the first time in my life, I felt a pang of conscience, but there was no other way out."
Etymology
The origin of the noun is uncertain; it is possibly derived from Middle English *pange, perhaps an altered form of prange, prōnge (“affliction, agony, pain; pointed instrument”) as in prongys of deth (“pangs of death, death throes”), from Anglo-Latin pronga, of unknown origin. Perhaps connected with Middle Dutch prange, pranghe (“instrument for pinching”) (modern Dutch prang (“horse restraint; fetter, neck iron”)), Middle Low German prange (“pole, stake; (possibly) kind of pillory or stocks”), Old English pyngan (“to prick”). The word may thus be related to prong. The verb is derived from the noun.
From: * various Chinese surnames, including Mandarin 龐 /庞 (páng), Cantonese 彭 (paang⁴) and Hokkien 馮 /冯 (pâng) * Khmer បាង (baang).
The name of the river is a back-formation from Pangbourne.
Related phrases
More for "pang"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.