to check status or seek rapid feedback from another party, generally for a discrete and often time-sensitive reason; adopted from the computer networking term in which one machine sends a signal to another to verify operating status, generating a standardized response from the receiver; used in an attempt to give a technical sheen to something that would otherwise be quotidian, as in “I’ll ping Adrian tomorrow to check how the draft report is going”; related to tickle, which is a similar brief communication oriented to subtly ensuring that progress is being made