Word.ws English Dictionary

ring hollow

ring hollow verb: to seem to be false or implausible; to be unconvincing.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To seem to be false or implausible; to be unconvincing.
    • In his own ears the words he spoke rang hollow, awkward, even impertinent. He could say nothing which did not seem hideously supercilious.1901, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter 9, in The Hero
    • Recognising your mistake and atoning for it is, of course, to be applauded, but after all the decades of cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy, it rang hollow for many.2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian
    Synonyms:
    ring false

Synonyms of ring hollow

Antonyms

Forms of ring hollow

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

Questions about ring hollow

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

Words near ring hollow in the dictionary

  1. ring games
  2. ring gauge
  3. ring gauges
  4. ring girl
  5. ring girls
  6. ring hollow
  7. ring homomorphism
  8. ring homomorphisms
  9. ring in
  10. ring in one's nose
  11. ring isomorphism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ring hollow (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:

Cite this entry: “ring hollow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ring_hollow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.