So, if one pings (yes, it’s now a  ”verb”) something or someone, they are said to be contacting something/someone with the intent of receiving an immediate response to ascertain their presence.

To be clear, I’m OK with the new verb.  However, I’m a little uneasy with the past tense of some of the new slang words that are entering the common vernacular.

So, does the past tense of “ping” get conjugated to “pinged”, which, unfortunately, should be pronounced like “hinged”, but people say “ping’d”?  Or should it be “pung”, much like “sung” or “hung”?

I think I’m going to start using “pung”.  That’s just the way I roll.

“My boss just pung me.”

“I pung Google, before I googled ’pung’.”

It will definitely catch on, I’m sure.

(For extra credit, what should be the past tense of using Microsoft’s Bing search engine?  I assume that some people still use “bing” as a verb…)

Update: So, after discussing this with a student (thanks Andre!), it might be a bit more complex than just “pung.”  We may have to have “pang” for the past tense, and “pung” for the past participle.  Examples forthcoming.

  • I pang you.
  • You were pung by me.
  • Donald pang the server.
  • The server was pung by Donald.
  • She pings all the servers he has pung.