Word.ws English Dictionary

spanger

US/ˈspeɪnd͡ʒɚ/

spanger noun: beggar, one who uses the phrase “spare change?”.

Noun

spanger (plural spangers)

  1. (US, derogatory, slang) beggar, one who uses the phrase “spare change?”
    • I squatted down on the sidewalk to get eye level with the spanger (someone who asks passerbys for spare change).2007, Pam Hogeweide, Spangers and Song on Hawthorne

Forms of spanger

pluralspangers

Origin of spanger

From spange + -er (“person who does”), root blend of spare + change, from stereotyped phrase “spare change?”, “spare any change?”.

Questions about spanger

What does spanger mean?
Spanger means beggar, one who uses the phrase “spare change?”.
What part of speech is spanger?
Spanger is a noun.
How do you pronounce spanger?
Spanger is pronounced /ˈspeɪnd͡ʒɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of spanger?
The plural of spanger is spangers.

Words near spanger in the dictionary

  1. Spangel
  2. Spangenberg
  3. Spangenbergs
  4. spangenhelm
  5. spangenhelms
  6. spanger
  7. spangers
  8. spanges
  9. spanghew
  10. spanghewed
  11. spanghewing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spanger (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860_(eng)-AlexLesniewski-spanger.wav.

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