PANG

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pang mean? 

• PANG (noun)
  The noun PANG has 3 senses:

1. a sudden sharp feeling

2. a mental pain or distress

3. a sharp spasm of pain

  Familiarity information: PANG used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PANG (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A sudden sharp feeling

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

pang; stab; twinge

Context example:

twinges of conscience

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 mental pain or distress

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

pang; sting

Context example:

a pang of conscience

Hypernyms ("pang" is a kind of...):

hurting; pain (a symptom of some physical hurt or disorder)

Sense 3

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)

 Context examples 

It was life, the pangs of life, this awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was a sound which did not make her cheerful; she wondered that Edmund should forget her, and felt a pang.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I was obliged to hurry away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse as made me miserable.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The suffocation he experienced was like the pang of death.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end for ever.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

If I could spare you one pang, my poor friend, he said, God knows I would.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The pang, as I plunged into it, was as quick and sharp as that of fire.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Indeed, Harriet, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it must have been.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)