zing
verbEtymology Of onomatopoeic origin.
1
To move very quickly, especially while making a high-pitched hum.
- We are all a second or two older than an astronaut who has been zinging around the Earth at 18000 miles per hour, because of his or her greater speed and the lack of gravity.2000, Nick Nelson, The Golden Vortex, Conscious Publishing, →ISBN, →OL, page 89:
- When the caller identified herself as from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle my heart zinged. I heard the words we had yearned for since March: They had found a donor marrow, mismatched at one antigen, that might work for Jane.2005, Donald Hall, The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 101:
2
Slang To address a witty insult or comeback to.
- Goomba: Ouch that was cold! Paragoomba: “What, you’re too good for us? Come off it, sister! Spike Goomba: “Nobody zings us like that! Nobody! Let’s get ’em!”2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube, level/area: Rogueport:
3
To make a zinging noise or sound.
- Outside, the crickets and the tree-frogs started to zing and tinkle and the great hawkmoths came to the wire-netting across the windows and clutched it, gazing with trembling ecstasy at the two oil lamps that hung from the cross-beams inside.1954, Ian Fleming, “The Undertaker's Wind”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 186: