From Middle English spang (“a small piece of ornamental metal; spangle; small ornament; a bowl or cup”), likely from Middle Dutch spange (“buckle, clasp”) or Old English spang (“buckle, clasp”).
Meanings
(obsolete) A shiny ornament or object; a spangle
With glittering spangs that did like starres appeare. 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 45:
From Middle English spang (“a small piece of ornamental metal; spangle; small ornament; a bowl or cup”), likely from Middle Dutch spange (“buckle, clasp”) or Old English spang (“buckle, clasp”).
And I didn't stop until I found myself spang in the middle of the Musée de Cluny, clutching the rack. 1936, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Faber & Faber, published 2007, page 22:
(intransitive) Of a flying object (such as a bullet), To strike or ricochet with a loud report.
How clear, sweet, spanging the hammer blows! 1918, Zane Grey, The U.P. Trail:
Occasional bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree trunks. 1895 October, Stephen Crane, chapter XVIII, in The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 173:
Uncertain. Cognate with Scots spang, and possibly related to English spank.
Meanings
(Scotland) A bound or spring; a leap.
Set roast-beef and pudding on the opposite side o' the pit o' Tophet, and an Englishman will mak a spang at it—[…] 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Rob Roy. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 13: