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PANG
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A sudden sharp feeling
Example:
twinges of conscience
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("pang" is a kind of...):
feeling (the experiencing of affective and emotional states)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pang"):
guilt pang (pangs of feeling guilty)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A sharp spasm of pain
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("pang" is a kind of...):
hurting; pain (a symptom of some physical hurt or disorder)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pang"):
birth pangs; labor pains; labour pains (a regularly recurrent spasm of pain that is characteristic of childbirth)
afterpains (pains felt by a woman after her baby is born; associated with contractions of the uterus)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A mental pain or distress
Example:
a pang of conscience
Synonyms:
pang; sting
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("pang" is a kind of...):
hurting; pain (a symptom of some physical hurt or disorder)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (first person singular and plural, second person singular and plural, third person plural) of the verb pang
Context examples:
It cost her a pang even to think of giving up the little treasures which in her eyes were as precious as the old lady's jewels.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
He never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
But these excursions out of the real were of brief duration, for ever the pangs of the hunger-bite called him back.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
Something sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
How could you bring a fresh pang to this holy man, who hath endured so much and hath journeyed as far as Christ's own blessed tomb?
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
As for myself, I am glad to have got the bustling days of preparation and the pangs of leave-taking behind me, and I have no doubt that I show it in my bearing.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
As for Marianne, on the pangs which so unhappy a meeting must already have given her, and on those still more severe which might await her in its probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest concern.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I do not fear to die, she said; that pang is past.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
