What it means
Straight from Jamaican Patois where it means "thing" but fully adopted into Multicultural London English and spread across every UK city with a decent sound system. Can mean literally anything: a person you're seeing, a situation, or just an actual object. The versatility is unmatched. You could have an entire conversation using only variations of ting and everyone would still understand perfectly.
Usage examples
"Yo fam she's got this new ting going on with some guy from ends, it's a whole ting apparently but nobody knows the full story still."
"Bro the whole ting at college was mad today, fire alarm went off twice, the canteen ran out of chips and the lecturer just gave up and let us go home before two."
"She got a new ting in Hackney, says he is calm but secretive, none of the girls have met him yet and the group chat is in meltdown about the whole situation since Monday."
Where it comes from
Straight Jamaican Patois for thing, sailed into London via Notting Hill Carnival sound systems and the postwar Caribbean diaspora. By the nineties Multicultural London English had absorbed it whole, and now ting carries any noun the speaker wants it to, from a romantic interest to a missing bus pass at the end of a long Friday.
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