Pong

How to spell pong

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pong

What does pong mean?

1. nounA strong, unpleasant smell.
2. verbTo smell strongly and unpleasantly.

Pong in a sentence

• noun

  A terrible pong drifted out of the office fridge.

• verb

  Those old trainers really pong after the run.

• noun

  The gym kit left a real pong in the hallway.

• verb

  The bins outside the flat tend to pong in hot weather.

Where does pong come from?

Language of origin: Other

Pong is a piece of British informal slang for a strong, unpleasant smell, and its precise origins are genuinely uncertain. The most widely cited suggestion traces it to Romani (the language of the Roma), in which a word like 'pan' or 'pani' has been linked to the idea of stinking or smelling. It surfaces in written English only in the early twentieth century, appearing in soldiers' and schoolboys' slang around the time of the First World War, which fits its breezy, dismissive tone. Because its trail goes cold so quickly, lexicographers are cautious about any firm derivation, and some treat it simply as an imitative or playful coinage. Whatever its source, the spelling is mercifully straightforward: it reads exactly as it sounds, so the only thing to remember is the silent-feeling 'ng' ending shared with words such as 'song' and 'long'.

How the word is built

• pong (single root; no prefix or suffix)