bang

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A sudden percussive noise.
  2. A strike upon an object causing such a noise.
  3. An explosion.
  4. Synonym of bangs: hair hanging over the forehead, especially a hairstyle with such hair cut straight across.
  5. The symbol !, known as an exclamation point.
  6. A factorial, in mathematics, because the factorial of n is often written as n!
  7. An act of sexual intercourse.
  8. An offbeat figure typical of reggae songs and played on guitar and piano.
  9. An explosive product.
  10. An injection, a shot (of a narcotic drug).
  11. An abrupt left turn.
  12. strong smell (of)
verb
  1. To make sudden loud noises, and often repeatedly, especially by exploding or hitting something.
  2. To hit hard.
  3. To engage in sexual intercourse.
  4. To hammer or to hit anything hard.
  5. To cut squarely across, as the tail of a horse, or a person's forelock; to cut (the hair).
  6. To inject intravenously.
  7. To depress the prices in (a market).
  8. To excel or surpass.
  9. To be excellent; to be banging
  10. To fail, especially an exam; to flunk.
  11. To make a turn in a vehicle; to hang a right, left, or uey.
  12. To gangbang; to participate in street gang criminal activity.
adv
  1. Right, directly.
  2. Precisely.
  3. With a sudden impact.
intj
  1. A sudden percussive sound, such as made by the firing of a gun, slamming of a door, etc.
noun
  1. Archaic spelling of bhang.

Pronunciation

/ˈbæŋ/ [ˈbæŋ] en-us-bang.ogg /ˈbeɪ̯ŋ/ [ˈbeɪ̯ŋ] /ˈbɛ̃ŋ/ [ˈbɛ̃ŋ]

Word forms

bang bangs bangue banging banged no-table-tags glossary bangest bangedst bangeth more bang most bang

Etymology

From Middle English *bangen, from Old English *bangian or borrowed from Old Norse banga (“to pound, hammer”); both from Proto-Germanic *bangōną (“to beat, pound”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰen- (“to beat, hit, injure”). Cognate with Scots bang, bung (“to strike, bang, hurl, thrash, offend”), Icelandic banga (“to pound, hammer”), Old Swedish bånga ("to hammer"; whence modern Swedish banka (“to knock, pound, bang”)), Danish banke (“to beat”), bengel (“club”), Low German bangen, bangeln (“to strike, beat”), West Frisian bingel, bongel, Dutch bengel (“bell; rascal”), German Bengel (“club”), bungen (“to throb, pulsate”). In the sense of a fringe of hair, from bang off. In the sense of abrupt left turn, from Boston left and associated risk of a crash.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.