Wort des Tages
4 June 2026
bang out
verbDrucktechnik
To celebrate (a fellow printing or newspaper industry worker) to mark their completion of an apprenticeship or their retirement by (formerly) hitting metal furniture in the printing room or (more recently) hitting one's desk in the newsroom.
Warum dieses Wort
A trade ritual that outlived its own hardware: the noise once came from mallets on metal type furniture in the composing room, and it survived into newsrooms as fists and rulers on desks.
In use
They banged him out on his last shift after forty years, whole floor hammering the desks until he got to the lift.
Written by our editors to show how the term is used, not a recorded quotation.