"to ping" (and OED Online)

[Joel S. Berson]

On March 16 Victor noted:

Oxford Dictionaries OL (not OED) has an interesting one for ping:
"Contact a person briefly (especially electronically): he just pinged
me, pointing to a breaking news story "

And this is an extension of the sense offered beginning March 14:

"To ping" -- to signal in an attempt to make a remote communications
connection.  (Moi)

As a verb, _ping_ means "to get the attention of" or "to check for the
presence of" another party on line. The computer acronym (for Packet
Internet or Inter-Network Groper) was contrived to match the submariners'
term for the sound of a returned sonar pulse.  (WhatIs.com, via Wilson)

(Should we call the locating device the "Giant Toad Pinger Groper"?)

Joel

At 4/8/2014 08:37 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>_Ping_: 'to inquire of.'
>
>CNN's _State of the Nation_ (March 16, 2014)
>
>https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20140316_130000_State_of_the_Union_With_Candy_Crowley#start/780/end/840:
>
>CANDY CROWLEY:  I did talk to a source at the CIA yesterday, and he said
>we're pinging everybody we know. You know, we're pinging agencies that we
>work with, we're pinging sources.

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