gongs

Noun (1)

gong (plural gongs)

1. A percussion instrument consisting of a metal disk that emits a loud resonant sound when struck with a soft hammer.
   • All the time six or eight large Chinese gongs were being beaten by the vigorous arms of as many young men, producing such a deafening discord that I was glad to escape to the round house, where I slept very comfortably with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 110
2. (UK, slang) A medal or award, particularly Knight Bachelor.
   • This grooming of the national mindset explains the retention of 92 "hereditary peers" in the House of Lords: individuals who are gifted a right to sit in the nation's upper chamber and facilitate laws for no other reason than that their ancestor was the illegitimate child of some prince, or willing...2021, Otto English, Fake History, page 114
3. A metal target that emits a sound when it has been hit.
   • Weems picked up the hammer and hit the gong so hard that it spun right around on its hanger and fell off.1986, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic, published 2022, page 184

Noun (2)

gong (plural gongs)

1. (obsolete) An outhouse: an outbuilding used as a lavatory.
   • The Iewe of Tewkysbury which fell into a Gonge vpon the Satyrday.a. 1513, Robert Fabyan, New Cronycles of Englande and of Fraunce, volume II, page xxxii
2. (obsolete) The contents of an outhouse pit: shit.

Noun (3)

gong (uncountable)

1. A kind of cultivation energy, more powerful than qi.

See all 12 meanings of gong