pang

Meanings

Noun

• A paroxysm of extreme physical pain or anguish; a feeling of sudden and transitory agony; a throe.
• A sudden sharp feeling of an emotional or mental nature, as of joy or sorrow.

Verb

• To cause to have great pain or suffering; to torment, to torture.
• Past of ping

Origin

• The Unknown; it is possibly derived from Middle English *pange, perhaps an altered form of prange, prōnge as in prongys of deth (“pangs of death, death throes”), from Anglo-Latin pronga, of unknown origin. Perhaps connected with Middle Dutch prange, pranghe (modern Dutch prang ("horse restraint; fetter, neck iron")), Middle Low German prange ("pole, stake; (possibly) kind of pillory or stocks"), Old English pyngan ("to prick"). The word may thus be related to prong.
• The verb is derived from the noun.