Word.ws English Dictionary

parang

/ˈpɑɹɑːŋ/

parang noun: a short, heavy, straight-edged knife used in Malaysia and Indonesia as a tool and weapon.

parang: a short, heavy, straight-edged knife used in Malaysia and Indonesia as a tool and weapon
Image: National Army Museum UK, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

parang (plural parangs)

  1. A short, heavy, straight-edged knife used in Malaysia and Indonesia as a tool and weapon.
    • After they had left, our men observed from their concealment that three had stayed behind with a small boat; and being driven to desperation by the sight of the plundering, one brave fellow swam off armed only with his parang, or chopping-knife, and coming on them unawares made a desperate attack...1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 211
    • “The bastards are quietly-quietly sharpening their parangs.”2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 124

Verb (1)

parang (third-person singular simple present parangs, present participle paranging, simple past and past participle paranged)

  1. To cut with a parang

Noun (2)

parang (countable and uncountable, plural parangs)

  1. A style of music originating from Trinidad and Tobago, strongly influenced by Venezuelan music.

Verb (2)

parang (third-person singular simple present parangs, present participle paranging, simple past and past participle paranged)

  1. To play parang music

Proper noun capitalized: Parang

Parang

  1. A municipality of Maguindanao del Norte, Philippines.

Forms of parang

Noun
pluralparangs
Verb
third-person singular presentparangs
present participleparanging
past participleparanged
pastparanged

Origin of parang

Borrowed from Malay parang.

Spanish parranda (“merry-making or a group of serenaders”).

Phrases with parang

Questions about parang

What does parang mean?
Parang means a short, heavy, straight-edged knife used in Malaysia and Indonesia as a tool and weapon.
What part of speech is parang?
Parang can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce parang?
Parang is pronounced /ˈpɑɹɑːŋ/.
What is the plural of parang?
The plural of parang is parangs.

Words near parang in the dictionary

  1. paraneural
  2. paraneuron
  3. paraneuronal
  4. paraneurons
  5. paranews
  6. parang
  7. paranged
  8. paranghi
  9. parangi
  10. paranging
  11. parangs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parang (page history and authors); Parang (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “parang.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/parang. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.