rung

Definition of rung

(Entry 1 of 2)

past participle of ring

rung

noun

\ ˈrəŋ

Definition of rung (Entry 2 of 2)

1a : a rounded crosspiece between the legs of a chair

b : one of the crosspieces of a ladder

2 Scotland : a heavy staff or cudgel

3 : a spoke of a wheel

4 : a level in a hierarchy rise a few rungs on the social scale— H. W. Van Loon

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Examples of rung in a Sentence

Noun

He was on the bottom rung on the corporate ladder. the top rung of society the lowest rung of the pay scale

Recent Examples on the Web: Noun

In fact, the top rung of European soccer clubs and administrators can think of little else at the moment. — Joshua Robinson, WSJ, "Soccer’s Super League Threat Isn’t Going Away," 12 Nov. 2018 For those at the lowest rung of the income ladder, incomes have gone down by about one percent. — Shirin Ghaffary, Recode, "Inequality in Silicon Valley is getting worse: Wages are down for everyone but the top 10 percent," 13 Oct. 2018 Try to climb higher, though, and the rungs get farther apart. — Evan Horowitz, BostonGlobe.com, "Being lucky really is more important than being good," 31 Mar. 2018 People trying to climb onto the ladder can’t get a handhold; people on the ladder’s bottom rungs get flung off by people nearer the top. — Adam Rogers, WIRED, "Big Tech Isn’t the Problem With Homelessness. It’s All of Us," 21 June 2018 Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer have held the same top two posts for more than a dozen years, clogging the upper rungs of the leadership ladder. — Matthew Green, Vox, "What Pelosi’s defenders miss," 29 Oct. 2018 The Ligier Formula 4 car is even more uncompromising, even though it's meant as the most junior rung on the single-seat ladder that, with enough skill and, perhaps more importantly, enough money, may eventually lead to Formula 1. — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, "How a day driving high-downforce cars at VIR taught me I’m OK being slow," 11 Sep. 2018 Its specs are different (and better), but a couple rungs below today’s flagship smartphones. — Chris Welch, The Verge, "Motorola Moto Z3 review: identity crisis," 13 Aug. 2018 Israeli Arabs are full citizens, occupying rungs in all sectors of society. — WSJ, "Younger Evangelicals on Israel and Palestine," 11 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'rung.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.