Variant spelling of 'wrong'; dialectal or archaic form indicating incorrect or mistaken.
From Old Norse 'rangr' meaning crooked or wrong, which entered English through Scandinavian influence. The modern spelling 'wrong' replaced 'rong' by the 14th century, though 'rong' persists in some dialects.
The phonetic shift from Old Norse 'rangr' to English 'wrong' shows how our language absorbed Viking influences—we also got 'ring,' 'wrangle,' and 'wring' from the same root. The letter 'w' often marks these Scandinavian borrowings.
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