twangy

[twang-ee]

adjective

1. having the sharp, vibrating tone of a plucked string.

2. having a nasal voice quality.

Other Word Forms

• twanginess noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of twangy¹

First recorded in 1885–90; twang + -y ¹

Example Sentences

Carpenter’s singing plays like an actor’s sizzle reel, by turns winsome, sneering, bubbly and resigned; in the twangy “Go Go Juice” alone — it’s about a woman who’s woken up at 10 a.m. and opted to spend the day drunk-dialing exes — she runs through every emotional gradient separating determination from shame.

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His 2025 debut album, “The Select” — its title nods to the Parisian brasserie from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” — puts bluesy guitar riffs against low-slung soul-rock grooves, as in the twangy “Let ’Em Talk” and the waltz-time “Ends of the Earth,” which has been streamed more than 70 million times on Spotify and is slowly moving up the country radio chart.

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A child of the Dust Bowl, Owens was born in Texas and spent much of his childhood in Arizona before popping up in Bakersfield‘s nascent music club scene. He brought a twangy sound to country ballads, and by the 1950s and 1960s, that sound had turned his city into a western rival to Nashville. Some of his hits included “Together Again,” “Crying Time,” “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” and “Under Your Spell Again.”

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Whatever it was, the twangy sound flew with the masses.

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She joined the 26-year-old pop star on a twangy reimagination of her chart-topping single “Please Please Please.”

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