ping

/pɪŋ/

ping noun: a high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound.

Noun

ping (plural pings)

A high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound.
- My car used to make an odd ping, but after the last oil change it went away.
- With a sudden ping, there was a rabbit there in the black labyrinth with him[.]1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 89
(submarine navigation) A pulse of high-pitched or ultrasonic sound whose echoes provide information about nearby objects and vessels.
- The submarine sent out a ping and got an echo from a battleship.
A packet which a remote host is expected to echo, thus indicating its presence.
- The network is overloaded from all the pings going out.
(Internet) An email or other message sent requesting acknowledgement.
- I sent a ping to the insurance company to see if they received our claim.
Latency.
- "You low ping c**t, you only win cos of your ping!"
  > > And other such insights into why I was winning.2000 November 8, the_mad...@my-deja.com, “HL DM with a low ping.......”, in alt.games.half-life (Usenet)
- Your best bet to negate lag is to go to a server using the zero ping mutator. This will compensate for your high ping when using a pistol, sniper or […]2002 June 24, drip, “Bandwidth - Lagtime”, in alt.games.unreal.tournament (Usenet)
A means of highlighting a feature on the game map so that allied players can see it.
A notification.

Verb

ping (third-person singular simple present pings, present participle pinging, simple past pinged or (nonstandard) pang, past participle pinged or (nonstandard) pang or (nonstandard) pung)

To make a high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound.
- My car was pinging until my last oil change.
- The microwave pinged. He forked the steak onto the plate and set the timer again.2013, Francine Rivers, And the Shofar Blew
(submarine navigation) To emit a signal and then listen for its echo in order to detect objects.
To send a packet in order to determine whether a host is present, particularly by use of the ping utility.
- I'm pinging their server.
- The server pings its affiliates periodically.
(broadly) To send an email or other message to someone in hopes of eliciting a response.
- I'll ping the insurance company again to see if they've received our claim.
- If any deeper etymology is required, Arthur, don't ping me; I'll ping you.2001 November 25, William Safire, “On Language; The Arab Street”, in New York Times
(colloquial) To flick.
- I pinged the crumb off the table with my finger.
(colloquial, intransitive) To bounce.
- The ball pinged off the wall and came hurtling back.
- At that moment a rifle cracked. The bullet pinged against the railings and whirred off on a ricochet.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 101
(colloquial, transitive) To cause something to bounce.
- Charging through the Bolton midfield to find a free moment, Essien then pinged the ball into the space into which Drogba was intelligently running.2010 December 29, Chris Whyatt, “Chelsea 1 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC
(colloquial) To call out audibly.
- However, after an inside pass from Moody to Tom Croft and a surge from the England blind-side, number eight James Haskell was eventually pinged from in front of the posts for not releasing.2011 September 24, Ben Dirs, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 67-3 Romania”, in BBC Sport
(Australia, colloquial) To penalize.
- Gary Ablett was pinged for holding the ball and gave away a free kick.
(ambitransitive, slang) To trigger a person's gaydar; to look or act obviously homosexual.
- Bob has two kids, but he really pings.
- Plus, he pings her gaydar big time, although there's nothing obvious about it in his comportment.2022, Maxim Jakubowski, The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories

Proper noun capitalized: Ping

Ping (plural Pings)

A surname.
A female given name.

ping meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

ping in Marathi

a packet which a remote host is expected to echo: पिंग piṅga

ping in Bengali

পিং

More languagesFewer languages

ping in Telugu: పింగ్, పింగు, పింగ్ చేయడానికి
ping in Malayalam: പിംഗ്, പിങ്, പിങ്ങിലേക്ക്
ping in Kannada: ಪಿಂಗ್, ಪಿಂಗ್ ಮಾಡಲು
ping in Punjabi: ਪਿੰਗ, ਪੀੰਗ
ping in Gujarati: પિંગ, પીંગ, પિંગ કરવા માટે
ping in Odia: ପିଙ୍ଗ, ପିଙ୍ଗ୍, ପିଙ୍ଗକୁ
ping in Nepali: पिङ, पिङ्ग, पिंग
ping in Persian: پینگ ping

Examples of ping in a sentence

Just because you cannot ping a server or telnet to it does not mean that the server is down or inaccessible.2008, Allan Reid, Jim Lorenz, Working at a Small-to-Medium Business or ISP, Cisco Press, →ISBN:
If certain attendees don't actively participate and that's a surprise to you, ping them an email or private chat message and ask what's happening for them.2014, Jessica Pryce-Jones, Julia Lindsay, Running Great Meetings and Workshops For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 294:

All 40 example sentences with ping

Forms of ping

Noun
plural	pings
Verb
third-person singular present	pings
present participle	pinging
past	pinged
past participle	pinged
past (nonstandard)	pang
past participle (nonstandard)	pang
past participle (nonstandard)	pung
Proper noun
plural	Pings

Past tense of ping: pinged

Plural of ping: pings

Origin of ping

Partly onomatopoeic, and partly continuing Middle English pingen (“to push, shove, pierce, stab, prod, goad, urge, feel remorse, incite”), from Old English pyngan (“to prick”), in turn likely from pungere. Compare English pang.

Words formed from ping

Phrases with ping

9 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with ping

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ping

What does ping mean?: Ping means a high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound.
What is ping in Hindi?: Ping in Hindi is पिंग. See Ping meaning in Hindi.
How do you use ping in a sentence?: Just because you cannot ping a server or telnet to it does not mean that the server is down or inaccessible.
What part of speech is ping?: Ping can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ping?: Ping is pronounced /pɪŋ/.
What is the plural of ping?: The plural of ping is pings.

Words near ping in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: ping (page history and authors); Ping (page history and authors); ping (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ping (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ping (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ping (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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

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