Ping

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nadia from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Nadia. Welcome to the show.

Hey there, what’s up?

Well, I wanted to call because my best friend and I, as people often do during work hours, we chat online through instant message. And, you know, we kind of start and stop throughout the day. And she’ll say, I’ll ping you later. And I thought, I’ll ping you later. That’s only a term I think that we use with each other. But then I was asking around, and people that maybe have technical jobs were saying that they use that term. And so I was wondering what the origin of the word ping is, and if it had anything to do with ping pong, the arcade game.

You can see why you might think that, right?

Yeah, you sure could. Back and forth. So she says she’s going to ping you. It means she’s going to reach out and see if you’re available to chat, something like that.

Yeah, exactly. But we never say, hey, I’ll pong you later. Like, I don’t have time to respond, but I’ll respond to you later. So there’s some history here, and it involves sonar, submarines, TCPIP packets, and instant message, as you’ve just noted. If you go back in English maybe 150 years, you will find ping being used as an onomatopoeia. It’s a word that represents the sounds of metal striking a metal. Ping! The ping, usually a sharp high sound, right?

Yeah. And so it predates ping pong. It predates ping me later. It predates all this stuff. But by the time that sonar became a thing during the middle of, I don’t even know how early it was. Let’s say sometime after 1900, sonar was a real thing. You use sonar underwater by sending out this high-pitched, super-strong signal in the water, and it hits a target or a rock and bounces back, and then you can read that and figure out where you are and how to turn, how to navigate and so forth. And they’ve always called that a ping practically since day one when you do sonar.

And so when IT started developing, when you started getting things like TCP IP packets, when the Internet became real in the late 60s and all of these technologies were developed, the idea that you send a packet out on the network that reaches a remote device and it says, hey, are you there? And the remote device sends another packet back saying, yes, I am. Send your message. And then they do this back and forth. That became called a ping.

So TCPIP, that thing that I always see when I’m setting up my email or whatever, that means a packet?

Well, that’s the technology under which the packet operates. So it’s a kind of transmission protocol. It’s actually two protocols together that work and form the basis of how the Internet works, and most office networks for that matter. It’s really interesting. And so later when you get more advanced communication on top of that Internet, this is, Nadia, where you get your ping from because the people to use these first technologies tend to be the geeks, the people who knew the underlying hardware and software and network protocols, and they’re the first ones to use ping as in ping me later, or I’ll ping you when that job order comes in so we can work on it together.

Now, ping pong naughty is a separate thing, but they are connected, interestingly enough, but they’re connected at the sound level. The sound of ping pong represents the sound of a ping pong ball on the paddle and then on the table. Ping pong, ping pong. And it comes up about, oh, late 1800s. Ping pong is a term for the sport.

Yeah, it was originally played on a table. I know you mentioned that the arcade game.

Oh, no, no, not at all. On the table. It’s just like the table tennis today, basically. That’s what we’re talking about. And so the ping in the name ping pong probably comes from the sound of the ball, and it is directly related to the verb ping, meaning to make a high, sharp, short sound.

So it’s just a coincidence that they both have to do with, well, technology or computers.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. So complicated paths. Who knew that submarines were involved?

But they are. Nadia, are you in the technical field or close to it?

I am, actually. That’s funny because both me and my friend are both in different industries, but both in technical fields. So we must have picked it up somewhere.

Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting that it left you guys, Grant, the computer geeks.

Yes. And migrated over to the rest of us. You know, Nadia, it’s actually the point where peeing is kind of considered old school jargon or old school slang, depending on your perspective. Because I think it goes back 20 or 30 years in the IT fields as being used. And it’s kind of the term that almost marks you as being a eunuch’s beard, as they call them.

So there you go, Nadia. That’s the short history.

Thanks for your pong on that.

My pong. Now, wait a minute. We talked about Pong recently on the show being sort of a musky body odor.

Oh, yeah. Related to pungent, right?

Right. Thanks, Nadia. I really appreciate the call.

Well, thanks so much. Love your show.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Thanks, Nadia. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Okay. Bye-bye.

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