Meaning & use
dinge
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Meanings
nouncountableinformalBritish
A small dent or scrape in a hard surface such as a car door or a metal pan.
Grammar: Countable: a dinge in the door. More often spelled ding, and used mainly in informal British speech.
Patterns
- a dinge in something
- a dinge on something
There is a small dinge in the wing of the car where the trolley hit it.
The saucepan had picked up a few dinges over the years.
He rubbed at the dinge on the bumper but it would not come out.
verbtransitiveinformalrare
To make a small dent in something hard.
Grammar: Takes an object: she dinged the door.
Patterns
- dinge something
Someone has dinged the tailgate in the car park.
Be careful not to dinge the new bike frame against the wall.
nouncountableoffensive
A racial insult for a Black person, found in older American writing; it is now regarded as offensive and should not be used.
Grammar: Mentioned here only so learners can recognize it and avoid it.
Dictionaries mark this sense of dinge as offensive.
If you see dinge used as a racial insult in an old text, treat it as a slur and do not repeat it.
Word forms
| plural | dinges |
|---|---|
| third person singular | dinges |
| past tense | dinged |
| -ing form | dinging |
Common combinations
- a small dinge
- The van has a small dinge on the roof.
- a dinge in the paintwork
- I noticed a dinge in the paintwork after the repair.
- pick up a dinge
- The suitcase picked up a dinge on the flight.
- dinge on the door
- She found a dinge on the door of the fridge.
Synonyms and how they differ
- dent
- Dent is the standard word and can be any size, while dinge suggests something small and slightly casual.
- ding
- Ding is the more common spelling and form of this word, especially for car damage.
- scratch
- A scratch is a line scraped on a surface and not a pressed-in hollow like a dinge.
- nick
- Nick is a small cut or chip in an edge, so it describes a different kind of mark.
Word family
Commonly confused: dinge or dingy?
dinge vs dingy
Dingy means dull, dirty or poorly lit, and it has nothing to do with dents, although the two words look and sound alike.
Practice
Which sentence uses dinge in its everyday, non-offensive sense?
Choose one answer.
Dinge as a noun means a small dent in a hard surface. The other options use it as a taste, an adjective and a travel verb, none of which is possible.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dinge”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.