Etymology of "ping"

By the way, dismissing Urban Dictionary out of hand seems very elitist, even if my question was purely about etymology to begin with. The whole point of etymology is how words are used and understood by actual people; it’s not some abstract ivory-tower field of study divorced from the plebs. Urban Dictionary is a primary source of actual usage just like any other (well quasi-primary, quasi-secondary).

(Obviously there’s some issues with accuracy due to possible trolling, but I doubt that applies to the specific entry I quoted. There’s no upside in giving an accurate definition but deliberately misstating the etymology in a plausible way.)

If you already knew Urban Dictionary supported your position, why did you post the thread in the first place?

If you didn’t already know it but discovered it after you started the thread, isn’t it worth saying something to the effect of, “Hey, I think I may have answered my own question by finding this over at Urban Dictionary”?

Urban Dictionary, as nearly as I can tell, makes no effort whatsoever to document etymology, it merely reports and allows users to vote for or against perceived usage. Citing it in a GQ thread about etymology is like citing a Facebook poll in a CS thread about the best movie of the last 50 years. It provides data, but not the best data and certainly not factual data.

Funny that ping would catch on, but the John Door MIB didn’t. Oh well, shows you how a catchy name helps.

That’s pretty much what I did, wasn’t it? I was not aware of the Urban Dictionary entry until it was pointed out to me somewhere else, after I posted this message. Besides, even if I were, I would want confirmation (such as that which Ascenray provided) with more data points so posting this obviously provided some value.

Also, no one has answered my question about whether there are any other similar words with “lost” technical etymologies. If there aren’t, then “ping” is unique and there’s value is discussing it.

Your first post citing UD is this:

I see nothing to indicate that this came as new information to you or that you are specifically offering it as having found your own answer.

It was, but I’m not sure why that matters. And it’s not the full answer, just a data point supporting a possible answer to part of the question (and not even the most interesting part…the last part is what I’m really curious about.)

I could have written this thread assuming the answers that I thought to be true w.r.t to “ping”'s etymology and how it is misunderstood by people using it, but I could have been wrong. (There’s a non-zero chance that Si Amigo is being serious and that everyone assuming the technical origin is guilty of information age selection bias.)

It’s a GQ thread about etymology and perceived etymology. It’s more like citing a Facebook poll in a CS thread about movies commonly considered popular by non-cinephiles, not “best” movies.

Side-note: The word “ping” (as in the network utility program) is alleged (in some circles) to be an acronym for “Packet Internet Groper”.

This appears to be just another case, however, of simple words being given contrived acronym derivations after-the-fact.

But I could just go over to Urban Dictionary and add my own definition and then you would believe it as a second point of reference (the first one being my post here that you don’t believe). :smack:

The definition on Urban Dictionary is already correct, but the etymology may or may not be. If you added an entry claiming a specific etymology, I would not believe it, no…just like I don’t (currently) believe the entry that claims the etymology derives directly from the sonar ping; it’s just evidence that at some point someone believed it.

Furthermore, if you added it, then there would be evidence, given this discussion, that you might specifically be trolling, whereas that seems unlikely for the original entry. If you are not, then at best your entry might be evidence that you believe the etymology is older, but even if you’re being serious it’s always possible you are misremembering things.

Anyway, I’m certainly open to being wrong, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked. If you are serious, then it’d be useful information to know, but I just can’t figure out if you are based on your tone.

bababadalgharagh writes:

> By the way, dismissing Urban Dictionary out of hand seems very elitist, even if
> my question was purely about etymology to begin with. The whole point of
> etymology is how words are used and understood by actual people; it’s not
> some abstract ivory-tower field of study divorced from the plebs. Urban
> Dictionary is a primary source of actual usage just like any other (well quasi-
> primary, quasi-secondary).

Well, no. Etymology is in fact quite a technical field. If you’d like to see just how difficult it is, search for the threads on the SDMB about the origins of the phrase “the whole nine yards”. We’ve done some of the etymological work about that phrase right here on this board, but most of the work has been done on the board of the American Dialect Society, a couple of members of which are also on the SDMB. There are a lot of folk theories about the origin of the phrase, all of which can be shown to be wrong. It’s easier these days to do etymological research, since more and more books, magazines, and newspapers are being scanned into computer databases which can be searched. It’s clear that the origin is more complicated than was thought just a few years ago.

The proponents of the various folk etymologies for the phrase get screamingly angry when you tell them that their theory of the origin is wrong. And nothing seems to persuade them that they are wrong. We’ve gotten many such posters to this board. There will be a long thread showing that their theory (among others) is wrong, and at the end of it they will post “Here’s what I’ve been told” and post one of the theories that has been disproved earlier in the thread. I’m sorry, but the Urban Dictionary is basically useless for etymologies. It’s very good for finding out all the meanings that people use for a word, but untrained people do not have a good feeling for the etymologies of the words they use.

That’s fine, but I’m not claiming UD’s claims of an etymology are correct (I’m claiming the opposite actually), I mean just using it as another source of word usage that can be dated to a specific point in time. The entry I quoted is evidence that the word is used in a personal communications context without explicit understanding of its (probable) technical origin, which allows for the possibility it might have an independent etymology but isn’t hard evidence that it is the case. If there were no evidence whatsoever that anyone used “ping” like this without knowing about ping the utility, then obviously there would be no question about the etymology.

“Pushing the envelope” originated in aerospace engineering/flight testing. The “envelope” being the range of parameters it was safe to fly an aircraft in, and pushing it meant seeing where things really became unsafe, or deliberately operating beyond design parameters.

A few years ago, this business book came out: http://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Envelope-All-Way-Top/dp/0449006697

The title and cover art make it pretty clear that the B-school types don’t appreciate the origional meaning: You are intended to stay inside the envelope, and pushing it is risky and stupid and to be done only by test pilots wearing parachutes. The B-school understanding seems to think it is something external, and pushing it means advancing it.

No more elitist than dismissing the results of a random man-on-the-street poll about semiconductor device physics. Actually, etymology is not about how words are used and what they mean; it’s about the history of words and their meanings. Urban Dictionary is like Wikipedia with all of the peer reviews and citations removed. It’s just a bunch of random people saying “hey, let’s have some fun and tell everyone that ‘wildebeest’ is slang for having three-way sex in a hammock while high on mushrooms!”

Exactly.

Really? Which of the 68 Urban Dictionary definitions of “ping” are you referring to? The one that says “Asians. Or Davids Dog. Someone with Chinky Eyes. Yellow Skin and an annoying laugh.” Yeah, that sounds correct.

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:55, topic:652161”]

Really? Which of the 68 Urban Dictionary definitions of “ping” are you referring to? The one that says “Asians. Or Davids Dog. Someone with Chinky Eyes. Yellow Skin and an annoying laugh.” Yeah, that sounds correct.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, 2 up, 26 down for that definition. Not one that I would consider to be accurate. I have yet to find a wrong definition on Urban Dictionary that is strongly rated. It is a perfectly good source for finding definitions for current slang. Do you know a better source? Don’t use it for etymology, but if you want to find out what a slang expression means, Urban Dictionary has literally never failed me.

I loved that book as a kid. Imagine my surprise, on a trip to China, to find the word “ping” being used to mean a bottle, as in a bottle of beer. And a plucked, beheaded duck hanging in a window DOES look like a bottle!

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:55, topic:652161”]

Really? Which of the 68 Urban Dictionary definitions of “ping” are you referring to? The one that says “Asians. Or Davids Dog. Someone with Chinky Eyes. Yellow Skin and an annoying laugh.” Yeah, that sounds correct.
[/QUOTE]

Obviously I mean the particular entry cited. It is accurate as can be verified from other sources of “ping” usage. I am not claiming the definition is correct because it is on UD, it is correct because it is consistent with other verifiable usage.

The value of the entry is that it provides evidence that “ping” is used in this way without explicit knowledge of the network utility: in fact, with an explicit understanding of an alternate etymology (which merely allows the possibility that it might be true, without providing evidence that it is). There might be a better source for demonstrating this, but what?

Thanks Kevbo, this is the kind of thing I was looking for.

No, I don’t. I’ve tried using it a few times for slang, and the definitions tend to be all over the map. I think I’ve used it half a dozen times and only found a definition that made sense once.

Sorry, then. I misunderstood. I thought you were using Urban Dictionary as a citation for a discussion in GQ.