[Vocabulary] tang

[Silverobama]

Hi,

What does the "with a tang to it" mean in this sentence?


He treated murder as a joke with a tang to it.


Thanks a lot

 

[Munch]

A "tang" is a sharp, biting flavour. Some people put lemon in water, to make their drink "tangy".

So murder was almost a joke to him, but to some degree he realized it was serious.

 

[5jj]

Tang = sharp flavour (think of lemons)

A joke with a tang has a sharpness, a bite.

The writer may be talking about a murderer with a perverted way of looking at his 'work', or a detective, reporter or novelist who could see only the intriguing (for them) aspects of a murder.

 

[Tdol]

Is this the 'crossbow cannibal'? If so, he taunted (teased) the police and knew a lot about crime, so understood what he was doing, but also saw it in some ways as a game. If not, it could apply:
BBC News - Crossbow Cannibal given life term for Bradford murders

 

[Silverobama]

Is this the 'crossbow cannibal'? If so, he taunted (teased) the police and knew a lot about crime, so understood what he was doing, but also saw it in some ways as a game. If not, it could apply:
BBC News - Crossbow Cannibal given life term for Bradford murders

No, not really, I will make a further explanation in the following post.

 

[Silverobama]

Thanks you three a lot.

I got the sentence from my Chinese big dictionary, because the dictionary was edited by a professor in China, so I guess the sentences were made by himself.

According to the Chinese counterpart of the sentence, it means:

He thought killing someone was very common(indeed it is serious to kill someone), and within this commonness there was a little excitement.

So I wonder if the sentence means what I mentioned above(the bold part) to you?

 

[Silverobama]

Anyone can help to confirm it?

 

[5jj]

I got the sentence from my Chinese big dictionary, because the dictionary was edited by a professor in China, so I guess the sentences were made by himself.

According to the Chinese counterpart of the sentence, it means:

He thought killing someone was very common(indeed it is serious to kill someone), and within this commonness there was a little excitement.

So I wonder if the sentence means what I mentioned above(the bold part) to you?

I think Munch, Tdol and I have probably said all we can with the information we have at the moment. Does your professor present this sentence as a quotation which accompanies a definitition. If so, which word is he defining? Or is it an encylopaedic dictionary with the sentence as information about a person?
I think that if you want confirmation (or rejection) of your thoughts, we'll neeed to see the whole dictionary entry.

On the information so far, your interpretation of the meaning could be correct, but I cannot state absolutely that it is correct.

 

[Silverobama]

Does your professor(He is not my professor but a professor from a very famous university in China, and the big paper dictionary was edited by him and some other aids.) present this sentence as a quotation which accompanies a definitition.(There isn't an English definition, but a Chinese translation following the sentence. Imagine that, Five, my dear friend, you look up a term in a dictionary, then you can see the definition and sentence rather than the definition of the whole sentence, am I right?) If so, which word is he defining?(tang) Or is it an encylopaedic dictionary with the sentence as information about a person? (Just a common Chinese-English dictionary)
I think that if you want confirmation (or rejection) of your thoughts, we'll neeed to see the whole dictionary entry.(No need at all, you've helped me a lot)

On the information so far, your interpretation of the meaning could be correct, but I cannot state absolutely that it is correct.(Thanks, so according to you, the translation is correct but not for sure. Can you tell me why you said "Could"? Did you mean there could be many interpretations of the sentence? Maybe he treated murder as a joke but to a certain degree it was serious, like Munch said? or It also could mean what I said, He treated murder as a joke and it made him felt excited?)

Yours

 

[Tdol]

I don't think it means common- I think he didn't take it seriously, didn't suffer from moral qualms about doing it or the thought of doing it, and got some excitement out of it.

 

[5jj]

On the information so far, your interpretation of the meaning could be correct.
Thanks, so according to you, the translation is correct but not for sure. Can you tell me why you said "Could"? Did you mean there could be many interpretations of the sentence? )

I simply meant that there is a possibility of the the interpretation being correct, though we see from the previous post that Tdol does not think so. I did not mean necessarily that there could be other meanings, though I accept this possibility.

You said there was no need to give us the whole definition - and then asked further questions! It is impossible to give answers that are 100% accurate without seeing the whole dictionary entry. Even then we might not be able to give totally reliable answers, because of our lack of knowledge of Chinese, though some among us might have such knowledge.

 

[Silverobama]

You said there was no need to give us the whole definition - and then asked further questions! It is impossible to give answers that are 100% accurate without seeing the whole dictionary entry. Even then we might not be able to give totally reliable answers, because of our lack of knowledge of Chinese, though some among us might have such knowledge.

I guess you've totally misunderstood what I meant, my dear friend. I wasn't saying I didn't want to give your the whole entry. But the paper dictionary is Chinese. The whole definition are Chinese. Actually, except the sentence all are Chinese. I won't be that impolite to mean that, my friend.