Word.ws English Dictionary

ding

/dɪŋ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Midlands/ˈdɪŋɡ/

ding noun: very minor damage caused by being struck; a small dent or chip.

ding: very minor damage caused by being struck; a small dent or chip
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

ding (plural dings)

  1. (informal) Very minor damage caused by being struck; a small dent or chip.
    • Mike hit the bottom and picked up a little ding on his head.1966, Bruce Brown, director, The Endless Summer
    • If you surf regularly, then you're going to ding your board. Here's a rough guide on how to repair them... If the ding is on the rail, run tape across the ding conforming to the rail curve, leaving a gap to pour in resin and make sure it is sealed to prevent resin escaping and forming dribbles.2007 September, “Ding Repairs”, BBC Wales, archived on 5 October 2014
  2. (colloquial) A rejection.
    • I just got my first ding letter.

Verb (1)

ding (third-person singular simple present dings, present participle dinging, simple past dinged or (obsolete) dang, past participle dinged or (obsolete) dang or (obsolete) dung)

  1. (transitive) To hit or strike.
  2. To dash; to throw violently.
    • to ding the book a coit's distance from him1644, John Milton, Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, London: [s.n.], →OCLC
    • The butcher's axe (like great Alcides' bat) / Dings deadly downe ten thousand thousand flat.1630, Taylor's Works
  3. (colloquial, transitive) To inflict minor damage upon, especially by hitting or striking.
    • If you surf regularly, then you're going to ding your board.2007 September, “Ding Repairs”, BBC Wales, archived on 5 October 2014
  4. (colloquial, transitive) To fire or reject.
    • His top school dinged him last week.
  5. (colloquial, transitive) To deduct, as points, from (somebody), in the manner of a penalty; to penalize.
    • My bank dinged me three bucks for using their competitor's ATM.
    • […] [E]mployees don't feel like they're going to get dinged on performance reviews because they had the same goals as a guy who had been there all 12 months with no leave.2015 August 7, Ron Lieber, “Bringing paternity leave into the mainstream [print version: Paid leave expands for fathers, but will there be any takers?, International New York Times, 10 August 2015...
  6. (transitive) To mishit (a golf ball).
  7. (Scotland) To fall heavily and continually, with great force.
    • The night turn'd dark an' dang on rain, […]1821, William Liddle (of Edinburgh.), Poems on different occasions, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, page 226
    • An awfu' show'r o' sna' and drift / As ever dang down frae the lift; / Right wild an' monstrous Boreas roar'd.1832, John Burness, Thrummy Cap, a Tale [in Verse]; and The Brownie O' Fearnden, a Ballad, page 4

Noun (2)

ding (plural dings)

  1. The high-pitched resonant sound of a bell.
  2. (colloquial, especially, roleplaying games) The act of levelling up.

Verb (2)

ding (third-person singular simple present dings, present participle dinging, simple past and past participle dinged)

  1. (intransitive) To make a high-pitched resonant sound like a bell.
    • The fretful tinkling of the convent bell evermore dinging among the mountain echoes.1824, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], Tales of a Traveller, (please specify |part=1 to 4), Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea, […], →OCLC
    • These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long.1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To keep repeating; impress by reiteration, with reference to the monotonous striking of a bell.
    • If I'm to have any good, let it come of itself; not keep dinging it, dinging it into one so.1884, Oswald Crawfurd, English comic dramatists
  3. (colloquial, especially, intransitive, roleplaying games) To level up.

Noun (3)

ding (plural dings or ding)

  1. An ancient Chinese vessel with legs and a lid.

Noun (4)

ding (plural dings)

  1. (Hong-Kong) An indigenous inhabitant of the New Territories entitled to the building a village house under the Small House Policy.

Noun (5)

ding (plural dings)

  1. (Australia, Western, ethnic, offensive, slur) an Italian person, specifically an Italian Australian

Noun (6)

ding (uncountable)

  1. In American Chinese cuisine, cubed or bite-sized meat.
    • shrimp ding
    • chicken ding

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Ding

Ding

  1. (historical) A prefecture of imperial China within present-day Hebei under the Northern Wei, Sui, and Tang dynasties, with its seat at Dingzhou.
  2. (historical) A county of Republican China in Hebei Province.
    Synonyms:
    Dingxian

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Ding

Ding

  1. A surname from Mandarin or Eastern Min.

ding meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

ding in Tamil

டிங்

ding in Marathi

डिंग, डिंग करण्यासाठी

ding in Urdu

گھنٹی بجتے رہنا, دھکا دینا, پیٹنا, ٹھونکنا

ding in Bengali

ডিং, ডিঙ, ডিং করার জন্য
More languagesFewer languages
ding in Telugu
డింగ్
ding in Malayalam
ഡിംഗ്, ഡിങ്
ding in Kannada
ಗಂಟೆಹೊಡೆ
ding in Punjabi
ਡਿੰਗ, ਡੀੰਗ
ding in Gujarati
ડિંગ, ડીંગ
ding in Odia
ଡିଙ୍ଗ, ଡିଙ୍ଗ୍, ଡିଙ୍ଗକୁ
ding in Nepali
डिङ, डिंङ, डिङ्ग

Examples of ding in a sentence

  • Ding initiates the pawn exchange (19 cxb5 axb5).
  • Diagram of mold for casting a fang ding.
  • Something to break the surface, just ding it a little.

All 12 example sentences with ding

Synonyms of ding

Forms of ding

Noun
pluraldings
pluralding
alternative formting
Verb
third-person singular presentdings
present participledinging
pastdinged
past participledinged
past (obsolete)dang
past participle (obsolete)dang
past participle (obsolete)dung
Proper noun
alternative formTing

Past tense of ding: dinged

Plural of ding: dings

Origin of ding

From Middle English dingen, dyngen (strong verb), from Old English *dingan (“to ding”), from Proto-West Germanic *dingwan, from Proto-Germanic *dingwaną (“to beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰen- (“to beat, push”). Related to Old English denġan, denċġan (“to ding, knock, beat, strike”, weak verb) and Old Norse dengja (“to hammer”, weak verb); both from Proto-Germanic *dangijaną (“to beat, hammer, peen”), causative of *dingwaną. Cognate with Icelandic dengja (“to hammer”), Swedish dänga (“to bang, beat”), Danish dænge (“to bang, beat”), German tengeln, dengeln (“to peen”).

Onomatopoeic. Compare ding-dong,

Romanized from Mandarin 鼎 (dǐng).

Words formed from ding

Phrases with ding

Words that rhyme with ding

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ding

What does ding mean?
Ding means very minor damage caused by being struck; a small dent or chip.
What is ding in Tamil?
Ding in Tamil is டிங். See Ding meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ding?
Ding can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ding?
Ding is pronounced /dɪŋ/ (UK).
What is the plural of ding?
The plural of ding is dings.

Words near ding in the dictionary

  1. dinettes
  2. dineutron
  3. dineutrons
  4. dineware
  5. dinful
  6. ding
  7. ding ding
  8. ding dings
  9. ding dinner
  10. ding dinners
  11. ding dong

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ding (page history and authors); Ding (page history and authors); ding (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ding (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ding (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ding (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ding.wav.

Cite this entry: “ding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.