twang

US/ˈtweɪ̯ŋ/

nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,374 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: twangs

A twang is the sharp ringing sound of a plucked string. The twang of the bow, a nasal twang, twang the string.

The word imitates the sound. It also describes an accent, and a nasal twang is what people call a voice with the sound coming through the nose — used most about American southern and Australian speech, and rarely as a compliment.

Definitions of twang

1nountwangThe sharp ringing sound of a plucked string.C1
“With a loud twang, the guitar string snapped in the middle of the song.”

twang is a sound.

Where it comes from

Imitative of the sound of a released string, recorded from the sixteenth century.

imitative of the sound. Compare Middle English twengen (“to pinch, tweak”) (whence modern English twinge), from Old English twenġan (“to pinch, twinge”); Middle English twingen (“to afflict, torment, oppress”), from Old Norse þvinga (“to weigh down, oppress”); Old English twingan (“to force, press”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

twang in the wild

The accents of such traditional varieties are commonly referred to as an Ottawa Valley twang or brogue.
Ottawa Valley English
In terms of syntax, the twang features the use of "for to" in place of the "to" initiative.
Ottawa Valley English
Later, however, the term came to be more broadly associated with regional dialects, to the extent that in some locations, "a twang is a desirable commodity".
Twang
Willie Nelson almost always sings with a twang voice.
Twang
In addition to retail and repair services, Elderly Instruments is noted as a center of local music culture for bluegrass and "twang" music.
Elderly Instruments

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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