Word.ws English Dictionary

ring out

ring out verb: to sound clearly and loudly.

Verb (1)

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

  1. To sound clearly and loudly.
    • Suddenly, a shot rang out and someone screamed.
    • The boys of the NYPD choir were singing "Galway Bay" / And the bells were ringing out for Christmas day1987, The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”
  2. To make a phone call from an internal phone system to a general telephone network number.
    • You can ring out if you dial 9 first and wait for the tone before dialling the number.
  3. (sound engineering) To equalize a sound system to eliminate feedback.
    • The objective of ringing-out a system is (believe it or not) to get as many frequencies as possible to ring at the same time as the system goes past its gain-before-feedback limit.1996, Scott Hunter Stark, Live Sound Reinforcement, page 110
    • I've got to get these mic lines set up and ringed out.2017, Hayden Nicholas, Rock Bottom, page 43
  4. To eliminate the middlemen in a circular pattern of transactions.
    • By section 7 a penalty is provided for any “ringing out” of contracts for future delivery.1894, United States. Congress, Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Fifty-Third Congress, Second Session (volume 26, part 7, page 6484)
    • Contracts in stocks w.i. (when issued—see When Issued) are also ringed out in the same manner as contracts in futures in grain, cotton, coffee, etc.1930, The Practical Handbook of Business and Finance, page 434

Noun

ring out (plural ring outs)

  1. A win in a fighting game obtained by throwing one's opponent out of the arena.
    • Even when Heihachi doesn't score a ring out with these combos, almost half of an enemy's health disappears […]2003, Michael Lummis, Soul Calibur II Official Fighter's Guide Limited Edition, page 105

Verb (2)

ring out (third-person singular simple present rings out, present participle ringing out, simple past and past participle ringed out)

  1. (ambitransitive) To throw (an opponent) out of the arena, thereby winning.

Forms of ring out

Verb
third-person singular presentrings out
present participleringing out
pastrang out
past participlerung out
past participleringed out
pastringed out
Noun
pluralring outs

Origin of ring out

From ring (verb) + out (adverb).

Calque of Japanese リングアウト (ringu auto), equivalent to English ring (noun) + out (verb)

Questions about ring out

What does ring out mean?
Ring out means to sound clearly and loudly.
What part of speech is ring out?
Ring out can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of ring out?
The past tense of ring out is rang out.

Words near ring out in the dictionary

  1. ring one's bell
  2. ring oscillator
  3. ring oscillators
  4. ring ousel
  5. ring ousels
  6. ring out
  7. ring outs
  8. ring ouzel
  9. ring ouzels
  10. ring play
  11. ring plays

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ring out (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-ring out.wav.

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