tongs: [OE] The etymological notion underlying the word tongs is of ‘biting’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *tanguz (source also of German zange, Dutch and Danish tang, and Swedish tång), which went back ultimately to the Indo-European base *dank- ‘bite’ (ancestor of Greek dáknein ‘bite’). (Tong ‘Chinese secret society’ [19], incidentally, comes from Cantonese tong ‘assembly hall’.) [tongs etymology, tongs origin, 英语词源]