So, I told a colleague today that I would ping someone to see about the status of something, and then went back to the colleague to say that I had completed the task, but was unsure whether I should say "pinged" as the past tense of "ping."
If you look at other verbs with similar construction, like "ring," "sing," you'd say "I rang the bell," or "I sang the song," or "the song was sung very well," you obviously wouldn't say "I singed the song," or "I ranged the bell," so it seems a bit weird to say "I pinged someone about the status of your request," right?
But, "pinged" seems to be the most common. I've never heard anyone say "I pang the server" or "the server has been pung repeatedly and it fails to respond to pings."
Stick with pinged or should phrases be reworded to avoid using a past tense of ping altogether?
4 Comments
I think the reason it's pinged and not pang etc, is that 'ping' isn't a real verb. It's one of those words that entered common usage based on relatively recent (at least linguistically) events... and these words are not often subject to the same rules (unfortunately).
I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet that even back in the early submarine days, even the folks on board them didn't discuss pinging as much as we do today, and if they did, I'd guess they'd have several other more formal words to use that refer to sonar.
In geek terms, the reciprocal event - rather the reflected ping - is often colloquially referred to as a 'pong', so introducing more vowels in terms of pang and pung would only add to the confusion.
To answer your question, I reckon stick with 'pinged', except in formal circles where you can don your best snobby accent, tilt your nose upward and say "I sent an ICMP echo request"
Cheers for the fun post
Google says pinged. Not really surprising as English seems to be gradually losing its non-normal forms. And there are others: you dinged my car (not danged it, hopefully) as you zinged (not zang) past. Oh, and my piece in checkers was kinged (not kanged).
BTW: that should be "fails to pong" as "fails to respond to pings" is wordy.
Pinged seems right to me.
My friend and co-worker, Jos, laughed to tears b/c I used 'pung'. My example of why it was right was that you don't get 'stinged' by a bee, you get stung (don't you..?). So I went on a pinged/pung search and it seems I was wrong or have I been wronged by the English language?