Fang

How to spell fang

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fang

What does fang mean?

1. nounA long, sharp, pointed tooth, especially of a dog, snake, or other animal that uses it to seize or pierce.

Fang in a sentence

• The vet warned that the dog had cracked a fang and needed surgery.

• The snake sank one fang into the leather glove during the demonstration.

Where does fang come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from Old English 'fang' or 'feng', a noun meaning 'a catch', 'a seizing', or 'plunder', closely tied to the verb 'fon', meaning 'to seize or grasp'. The same Germanic root survives in modern German 'fangen', meaning 'to catch', and in the related sense of something that grips or holds tight. For centuries in English the word kept its original idea of capture, and you can still hear that older flavour in dialect terms about getting a grip on something. The leap to the modern meaning came when speakers applied the idea of 'that which grips' to the long pointed teeth a snake or dog uses to seize and hold prey, and by the 1500s 'fang' had largely settled on this dental sense. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, with no silent letters, it has stayed remarkably stable and gives writers very little trouble.

How the word is built

• fang (single Old English root meaning a catch or seizing, later a grasping tooth)