Last night at choir one of the songs we were singing ended with the line “in the mor-ning”, with the mor and ning of morning clearly separated and on different notes. One of the tenors made a joke that we needed more ning in the morning, which appealed to me, and I wondered what ning might be and why we’d need more of it. I also wondered if ning is a word in any other language, and what it might mean.
So we need more ning in the morning and evening when lightning is adorning the darkening sky, and warnings of yawning are lessening.
For more nings see: http://www.rhymer.com/RhymingDictionaryLast/morning.html
There are a number of nings in Mandarin Chinese:
– 拧 [擰] (níng) = to twist; wring; pinch; tweak
– 凝 (níng) = to congeal
– 宁 [寧] (níng) = peaceful; tranquil
– 狞 [獰] (níng) = ferocious (of facial expression), as in (níngxiào) = sardonic smile
– 拧 [擰] (nǐng) = to screw; differ; disagree
– 宁 [寧] (nìng) = rather; would rather; surname
– 佞 (nìng) = to flatter; toady
– 拧 [擰] (nìng) = pigheaded
– 泞 [濘] (nìng) = muddy
What about in other languages?
More 宁 in the morning. 🙂
Ningun in Spanish (ninguem in Portuguese) means ‘nobody’ – it contains ning, at least.
‘Ning’ is, according to some imitators, the sound a banjo makes, being the principal component of ‘ning-a-ning-a-ning…’, sometimes vocalised at me by ‘merry’ punters when I am seen with a mandolin (It’s kind of roundish, it has strings and frets, so what’s the difference?). I think it is safe to say that ‘ning’ is the sound of a 5-string banjo, not a tenor or any other kind of banjo (which variously go ‘plang’, ‘plunk’, ‘thunk’, ‘plom’, ‘thrum’ etc.)
Ning(.com) is a website for creating custom social networks. The name comes from the 宁 word.
In Finnish there are no words that end in ng, except some onomatopoetic words similar to ones found in other languages like klang, ring etc. However, I can’t think of a sound I might describe with the word ning.
Even Sanskrit doesn’t have a word निङ् niṅ (ṅ is the ng sound).
The -ning suffix is used in Swedish to form a noun from a verb, e.g. skymma /ˈɧʏmˌa/ ‘obscure’ and skymning /ˈɧʏmˌnɪŋ/ ‘dusk’ (to pick a word that fits your theme).
Wiktionary has a comprehensive list of Swedish words ending in -ning.
Outside of Chinese, “ning” is a conjunction in Estonian: ning 1.’and’ synonymous with ‘ja’ (and).