Word.ws English Dictionary

ring false

ring false verb: to seem to be incorrect, or implausible.

Verb

ring false (third-person singular simple present rings false, present participle ringing false, simple past rang false, past participle rung false)

  1. (idiomatic) To seem to be incorrect, or implausible.
    • His excuse about his car breaking down again rings false to me.
    • Moments of potential transcendence, such as an afternoon constitutional through an expressionistic wonderland recalling the Fuji Velvia vividness of What Dreams May Come, ring false in light of this project's mercenary origins.2018 December 12, Charles Bramesco, “A Spoonful of Nostalgia Helps the Calculated Mary Poppins Returns Go Down”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 24 May 2019
    Synonyms:
    ring hollow
    Antonyms:
    ring true

Synonyms of ring false

Antonyms

Forms of ring false

third-person singular presentrings false
present participleringing false
pastrang false
past participlerung false

Questions about ring false

What does ring false mean?
Ring false means to seem to be incorrect, or implausible.
What part of speech is ring false?
Ring false is a verb.
What is the past tense of ring false?
The past tense of ring false is rang false.

Words near ring false in the dictionary

  1. ring doughnut
  2. ring doughnuts
  3. ring dove
  4. ring doves
  5. ring down the curtain
  6. ring false
  7. ring field
  8. ring fields
  9. ring finger
  10. ring finger nail
  11. ring finger nails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ring false (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-ring false.ogg.

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