Rang

How to spell rang

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rang

What does rang mean?

1. verbThe simple past tense of 'ring': made a clear resonant sound, or operated a bell or telephone in the past.

Rang in a sentence

• The phone rang three times before she answered it.

• The alarm rang at six and woke the whole house.

Where does rang come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'ring', which comes from the Old English 'hringan', meaning to make a clear resonant sound, as a bell does. It belongs to a small family of strong Germanic verbs that mark their tenses by changing the vowel inside the word rather than by adding an ending, a pattern called ablaut; this is the same machinery that gives us sing, sang, sung and ring, rang, rung. The 'a' form has signalled the simple past for well over a thousand years, while the 'u' form 'rung' serves as the past participle used after 'have'. The spelling trap is purely that vowel: writers who confuse the simple past with the participle reach for 'rung' where 'rang' is correct. The verb meaning 'to encircle' is a separate, regular verb that gives 'ringed', so it never produces 'rang'.

How the word is built

• rang (strong-verb past tense of 'ring'; vowel change from ring to rang to rung)