stinger

noun — 16 senses

stinger

nounalso spelled Stinger

UK /ˈstɪŋ.ə(ɹ)/ · US /ˈstɪŋ.ɚ/

Etymology From sting + -er. Both figurative and literal senses appeared in the 16th century.

15 senses
  1. 1A pointed portion of an insect or arachnid used for attack.
  2. 2Anything that is used to sting, as a means of attack.
  3. 3Anything, such as an insult, that stings mentally or…
  4. 4A cocktail of brandy and crème de menthe.
  5. 5A portable bed of nails to puncture car tires, used by…
  6. 6A minor neurological injury of the spine characterized…
  7. 7A station identifier on television or radio played between shows.
  8. 8A scene shown on films or television shows after the credits.
  9. 9A nonlethal grenade using rubber instead of shrapnel…
  10. 10A short musical phrase or chord used non-diegetically to…
  11. 11A final note played at the end of a military march.
  12. 12An extension cord.
  13. 13A stinging nettle.
  14. 14Chironex fleckeri, an extremely venomous Australian box…
  15. 15An improvised heating element used to boil or heat water…
1

A pointed portion of an insect or arachnid used for attack.

2

Anything that is used to sting, as a means of attack.

  • The thing stopped then and looked at me a moment as much as to say: "Why this thing has a stinger! I must be careful." And then it reached out its long neck and opened its mighty jaws and grabbed for me; but I wasn't there.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
3

Anything, such as an insult, that stings mentally or psychologically.

4

A cocktail of brandy and crème de menthe.

5

A portable bed of nails to puncture car tires, used by police and military forces.

6

A minor neurological injury of the spine characterized by a shooting or stinging pain down one arm, followed by numbness and weakness.

7

A station identifier on television or radio played between shows.

8

A scene shown on films or television shows after the credits.

9

Slang A nonlethal grenade using rubber instead of shrapnel, more commonly called a sting grenade.

10

A short musical phrase or chord used non-diegetically to dramatic or emphatic effect.

  • The most commonly used tool in the horror score kit is the “sting” — a quick and loud jolt of sound that coincides with a frightening image or the attack of a killer or creature. “Stingers are a form of music that are unique to movies,” Young adds. “There’s no other venue of musicmaking that has a window of opportunity for writing these little splats of instrumental sound that exist for the sole purpose of getting the little girls in the audience to jump out of their seats. In two or three seconds, you have to do enough so that it isn’t melodrama, that it does the job and also it’s your signature.”2007 November 15, Jeff Bond, “Composing scary sounds not for the faint of heart”, in The Hollywood Reporter:
11

Slang A final note played at the end of a military march.

12

Broadcasting, Film, Media, Television Slang An extension cord.

13

West Country, Slang A stinging nettle.

14

Chironex fleckeri, an extremely venomous Australian box jellyfish.

15

Slang An improvised heating element used to boil or heat water in prison.

Derived terms
horse-stinger, marine stinger, mauve stinger, mesquite stinger moth, stingerless

Stinger

noun
1

Government, Military, Politics, War The FIM-92 portable infra-red homing surface-to-air missile.

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for stinger and Stinger.