Pang

How to spell pang

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pang

What does pang mean?

1. nounA sudden sharp feeling of pain or strong emotion.

Pang in a sentence

• A pang of guilt hit her the moment she clicked send on the email.

• By mid-morning the first pang of hunger reminded him he had skipped breakfast.

Where does pang come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Pang appeared in English in the early 1500s with the meaning of a sudden sharp spasm of pain, and its exact origin is genuinely murky. The leading suggestion is that it is an alteration of the older word 'prong' or 'pronge', which referred to a sharp point or a piercing spike, so the idea was of pain that stabs like a point being driven in. From the start it carried both a bodily sense, as in the pangs of hunger or childbirth, and an emotional one, as in a pang of guilt or regret. Because no clear ancestor in Old English or French has ever been pinned down, dictionaries treat it as a word of uncertain derivation, and that uncertainty is part of why it stayed short and blunt rather than acquiring a tidy Latin pedigree. The spelling is mercifully simple: it sounds exactly as it looks, with the silent-feeling 'ng' that English writers handle without trouble.

How the word is built

• pang (single root, no affixes; possibly an alteration of 'prong/pronge' meaning a sharp point)