Pong
/pɒŋ/noun
A strong, unpleasant smell; also the name of an early electronic table-tennis video game.
Did you know?The smell sense and the video-game name have separate histories: British slang “pong” emerged around the mid-20th century, while Atari’s Pong was named after table-tennis “ping-pong.”
Etymological Timeline
19th–20th Century
English dialect/slang
poong/pong
“A strong or unpleasant smell; probably expressive, sound-symbolic slang rather than a word with a traceable ancient root”
Early 20th Century
English
ping-pong
“Table tennis; a playful imitation of the sounds made by the ball and paddles”
1950s
British English
pong
“An unpleasant smell, especially a noticeable or lingering odor”
1972
American English
Pong
“The title of Atari’s electronic table-tennis game”
Modern English
English
pong
“A bad smell; also a generic or stylistic reference to the classic video game”