U.K. coverage of Led Zeppelin's award inspires word of the week: 'gong'

In U.K. reports, I keep seeing the word "gong" used as a synonym for "award," as in "Led Zeppelin received the Outstanding Achievement gong at Tuesday's GQ awards ceremony."

Evidently, this is like a trolley or a lift: They mean different things over there compared to how they're used on my side of the Atlantic.

Maybe I deserve a gong myself since I figured this out from context clues.

Here's one example from the print media. A small GQ write-up here quotes both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant on the frequency of awards throughout their career.

Page says:

"In our day we never got any."

Plant invokes the magic word, adding:

"The thing is, when the temples get grey, the gongs start coming in thick and fast."

You said it, man. Long live the gong!

On a completely different note, the first review I've seen trickle in from the world premiere of the guitar documentary "It Might Get Loud" in Toronto a few hours ago says this:

"Could this movie possibly live up to the hype? My friends, this movie lived up to everything I thought it would be ... and then turned it up to eleven."

Read the whole piece here.

Could a gong be in the future for Davis Guggenheim? I've already quoted Bob Thompson of the National Post here, who foresees an Oscar.