Ding

How to spell ding

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ding

What does ding mean?

1. nounA short, sharp ringing sound, like that of a small bell or chime.
2. nounA small dent or surface mark caused by a knock or impact.
3. verbTo strike something lightly, causing a small dent or a ringing sound.

Ding in a sentence

• noun

  The lift announced each floor with a soft ding.

• noun

  A stray trolley left a ding in the car door.

• verb

  Try not to ding the new worktop when you unload the shopping.

• noun

  A cheerful ding told her the toast was ready.

• noun

  The phone has a tiny ding on one corner from being dropped.

• verb

  A careless parker can easily ding the side of your car.

Where does ding come from?

Language of origin: Other

The word ding is an imitative or onomatopoeic creation, meaning it was coined to mirror the actual ringing sound of a bell or struck metal rather than descending from a single ancient root. It appears in English from around the sixteenth century, with parallels in the Old Norse verb dengja, meaning 'to hammer' or 'to beat', which may have reinforced the sense of striking. The clipped, ringing quality of the word made it a natural fit for the resonant note of a bell, giving rise to the familiar pairing 'ding-dong'. Over time the sense widened from the noise itself to the act of striking, and then to the small dent or mark left by a blow, which is why a car can pick up a ding in a car park. The American informal sense of a minor penalty or criticism (to ding someone) grew from that same idea of a small, glancing hit. Because the spelling simply matches the sound, it carries no silent letters or foreign quirks to trip a writer.

How the word is built

• ding (imitative root mimicking the sound of a struck bell)