Hang Meaning

/ˈhæŋ/
B1

Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

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verbTo be or remain suspended.

verbTo float, as if suspended.

Hang in there. You can do it!
Hang your coat on the hook.
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
Please ____ your coat on the hook by the front door.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We decided to ____ the new painting in the living room, right above the fireplace.

From Middle English hangen, hongen, from a fusion of Old English hōn (“to hang, be hanging”, transitive verb) and hangian (“to hang, cause to hang”, intransitive verb), respectively from the transitive verb Proto-West Germanic *hą̄han and the intransitive verb *hangēn; also probably influenced by Old Norse hengja (“to suspend”) and hanga (“to be suspended”); all from Proto-Germanic *hanhaną and *hangāną, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱenk- (“to waver, be in suspense”). See also Dutch hangen, Low German hangen and hängen, German hängen, Norwegian Bokmål henge, Norwegian Nynorsk henga; also Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌷𐌰𐌽 (hāhan), Hittite 𒂵𒀀𒀭𒂵 (/⁠kānk-⁠/, “to hang”), Sanskrit शङ्कते (śáṅkate, “is in doubt, hesitates”), Latin cūnctārī (“to delay”).

"On the dark-green walls hung a series of eight engravings, portraits of early Victorian belles, clad in lace and tarletan ball dresses, clipped from an old Book of Beauty. Mrs. Bunting was very fond of these pictures; she thought they gave the drawing-room a note of elegance and refinement." — 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter II, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0111:
"It was a couple of days after the crash, with the smell of burning still hanging in the air from the incinerated wreckage of Coach H, where 31 passengers lost their lives, when I visited the West London site." — 2023 September 20, Nigel Harris, “Comment Special: And it's goodbye from me...”, in RAIL, number 992, page 3:
"The jockey claimed that the horse hung towards the outside[…]" — 1979, Council of Law Reporting for New South Wales, New South Wales Law Reports (non-fiction), New South Wales: Council of Law Reporting for New South Wales, published 1979, page 16:
"It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." — 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 17:1-2:
"'[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—'" — 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

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CEFR Practice Quiz
Please ____ your coat on the hook by the front door.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We decided to ____ the new painting in the living room, right above the fireplace.

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