Word.ws English Dictionary

dead ringer

dead ringer noun: someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for another.

dead ringer: someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for...
Image: Sebastian Bieniek, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

dead ringer (plural dead ringers)

  1. (idiomatic) Someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for another.
    • He is a dead ringer for his grandfather at that age.
    • Hey, er, anybody ever tell you you're a dead ringer for…1953, Dalton Trumbo, Ian McLellan Hunter, John Dighton, Roman Holiday, spoken by Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert)

Examples of dead ringer in a sentence

  • In 1987, in “The Rules of Attraction,” he wrote about casual sex and obsessive drug use among bored students of a dead ringer for Bennington College, which Mr.2005 August 7, Edward Wyatt, “Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
  • He is world-famous writer Ezra Blazer, a dead ringer for Philip Roth, with whom Halliday had a relationship in her 20s.2018 February 28, Justine Jordan, “Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday review – a dizzying debut”, in The Guardian:

Synonyms of dead ringer

Forms of dead ringer

pluraldead ringers
alternative formdead-ringer
alternative formdeadringer

Origin of dead ringer

See ringer (“substitute”) and ring the changes

Questions about dead ringer

What does dead ringer mean?
Dead ringer means someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for another.
How do you use dead ringer in a sentence?
In 1987, in “The Rules of Attraction,” he wrote about casual sex and obsessive drug use among bored students of a dead ringer for Bennington College, which Mr.
What part of speech is dead ringer?
Dead ringer is a noun.
What is the plural of dead ringer?
The plural of dead ringer is dead ringers.

Words near dead ringer in the dictionary

  1. dead reckon
  2. dead reckoned
  3. dead reckoning
  4. dead reckonings
  5. dead reckons
  6. dead ringer
  7. dead ringers
  8. dead rise
  9. dead rises
  10. dead rising
  11. dead risings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead ringer (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-dead ringer.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dead ringer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dead_ringer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.