Word.ws English Dictionary

ling

/lɪŋ/

ling noun: any of various codlike saltwater fish often used as food by humans, those of the genus Molva, in the family Lotidae. Also the clipping of linguistics.

Noun (1)

ling (countable and uncountable, plural lings or ling)

  1. Any of various codlike saltwater fish often used as food by humans, those of the genus Molva, in the family Lotidae.
    • Other deep creatures now being harvested or targeted as seafood include rattails, skates, squid, red crabs, orange roughy, black oreos, smooth oreos, hoki, blue ling, southern blue whiting, sablefish, black scabbard fish and spiny dogfish.1995 December 26, William J. Broad, “Creatures of the Deep Find Their Way to the Table”, in The New York Times
    1. (especially) A common ling (Molva molva).

Noun (2)

ling (countable and uncountable, plural lings or ling)

  1. Any of various varieties of heather or broom.
    1. Common heather (Calluna vulgaris)
      • I was sitting by a path on a tussock between some bushes, whence I could overlook the path and a little valley to which it led down, and where nothing but ling and heather grew.1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 28
      • Partridges, enjoying their last weeks of security, rose whirring and clattering from among the ling.1931, Dorothy L. Sayers, The Five Red Herrings

Proper noun capitalized: Ling

Ling (plural Lings)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

ling is also the clipping of linguistics.

ling meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

ling in Tamil

லிங்

ling in Urdu

لنگ

ling in Bengali

লিঙ

ling in Telugu

లింగ్
More languagesFewer languages
ling in Malayalam
ലിങ്, ലിംഗ്
ling in Kannada
ಲಿಂಗ್
ling in Gujarati
લિન્ગ
ling in Odia
ଲିଙ୍ଗ୍

Forms of ling

Noun
plurallings
pluralling
Proper noun
pluralLings

Plural of ling: lings or ling

Origin of ling

From Middle English lenge, of Germanic origin. Cognate with Old Norse langa. Probably related to long.

From Middle English ling, linge, from Old Norse lyng.

From Mandarin 令 (Lìng)， 凌 (Líng) or Eastern Min 林 (Lìng).

Words formed from ling

Phrases with ling

Words that rhyme with ling

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ling

What does ling mean?
Ling means any of various codlike saltwater fish often used as food by humans, those of the genus Molva, in the family Lotidae.
What is ling in Tamil?
Ling in Tamil is லிங். See Ling meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ling?
Ling can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ling?
Ling is pronounced /lɪŋ/ (UK).
What is the plural of ling?
The plural of ling is lings.

Words near ling in the dictionary

  1. Linfen
  2. Linfield
  3. Linfoot
  4. Linford
  5. Linfords
  6. ling
  7. Ling-pao
  8. linga
  9. Lingala
  10. lingam
  11. lingam massage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ling (page history and authors); Ling (page history and authors); ling (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ling (Odia, 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.

Last updated:

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

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