Word.ws English Dictionary

ringer

/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/

ringer noun: someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.

Noun (1)

ringer (plural ringers)

  1. Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.
    • Pull, if ye never pull′d before;
      Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.1863, Jean Ingelow, High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire
  2. A crowbar.

Noun (2)

ringer (plural ringers)

  1. A person who places rings or bands on a bird's leg.
    • It is difficult to classify them precisely, but, in roughly ascending order of productivity, we now recognise the purely chance observer, the locality regulars (now recognising that ‘time in’ eventually equals ‘rarity out’), the ringers (particularly when working in groups), the occasional...1970, D.I.M. Wallace, “The first ten years of the Rarities Committee”, in British Birds, volume 63, number 3, London, page 124
  2. (Australia) A stockman, a cowboy.
    • The ringers are the stockmen on a station. The cattle pass through their hands before the drovers lift them and take them along the stock routes that lead to the killing pens in cities.1964, Alec Bolton, Walkabout′s Australia, Walkabout magazine, page 107
    • This vast holding is run by six ringers and six boys. A ringer is a qualified stationhand and a boy is a trainee. It takes four years for a boy to become a ringer.1987, Geoffrey Atkinson, Philip Quirk., The Australian Adventure: The Explorer′s Guide to the Island Continent, page 175
  3. In the game of horseshoes, the event of the horseshoe landing around the pole.
  4. (uncountable) A game of marbles where players attempt to knock each other's marbles out of a ring drawn on the ground.

Noun (3)

ringer (plural ringers)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A top performer.
  2. (Australia) The champion shearer of a shearing shed.
    • Click goes his shears; click, click, click.
      Wide are the blows, and his hand is moving quick,
      The ringer looks round, for he lost it by a blow,
      And he curses that old shearer with the bare belled ewe.1891 December 5, The Bacchus Marsh Express, Victoria, page 7, column 7

Noun (4)

ringer (plural ringers)

  1. (slang) Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.
  2. A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team.
    • Near-synonym: hustler
    • In this next clip from the security camera, we see that the rube flashing his wad of cash thinks he'll win, but he doesn't realize that the guy in the gray shirt is a ringer.
    Synonyms:
    hustler
  3. A horse fraudulently entered in a race using the name of another horse.
  4. (UK, slang) A fraudulently cloned (or cut-and-shut) motor vehicle.
    • I had heard early on in my career about 'ringers': cars that were stolen and cloned, but it was 1993 before I was to experience this first-hand.2020, Tom Hartley, Tom Hartley: The Dealmaker

Noun (5)

ringer (plural ringers)

  1. A person, animal, or entity which resembles another so closely as to be taken for the other; a look-alike (now usually in the phrase dead ringer).
    • That man over there is an exact ringer for my father!
    • I mean, he knows we never handed off the briefcase, but he never asked for it back. The million bucks was never in the briefcase! The asshole was hoping that they would kill her! You threw out a ringer for a ringer!1998, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, The Big Lebowski (motion picture), spoken by The Dude (Jeff Bridges)
    Synonyms:
    dead ringer

Noun (6)

ringer (plural ringers)

  1. (UK, in-compounds, informal) An officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve.
    • A group of naval one- and two-ringers were chatting by the office door with a few ratings, complete with kit-bags and oilskins.2012, John Harris, The Lonely Voyage
    • The senior officer of the escort was an RN two and a half ringer who had a reputation of being one of the best.2013, Dudley Pope, Convoy
  2. A ringer T-shirt.
    • […] shabby baseball caps, faded and worn-out T-shirts, ringers and polos with artificially aged hems […]2007, Descant, number 138, page 28
    • The shirts were light blue heather ringers with royal blue trim on the necks and sleeves.2011, Buck Peden, Baseball, Golf, Wars, Women & Puppies: An Autobiography, page 278

Proper noun capitalized: Ringer

Ringer

  1. A surname.

Noun (7) capitalized: Ringer

Ringer (plural Ringers)

  1. (slang) A fan of the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and/or the film trilogy based on it.
    • Readers flocked online to articulate their angst, discovering 400 websites where "Ringers" congregated to converse in Quenya – one of Tolkien's fictional languages – and discuss such burning issues as whether elves have pointy ears.2001 November 10, Kathy Marks, “The campaign for real Tolkien”, in The Independent
    • One Ringer travels all over and takes pictures of her "Lord of the Rings" figurines.2005 January 27, Jody Genessy, “Slamdance gets infusion of 'Lord of Rings' mania”, in Deseret News
    Synonyms:
    Ringnut

ringer meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

ringer in Hindi

रिंगर, रिंगार

ringer in Tamil

கறங்கி

ringer in Marathi

रिंगर, रिंगार

ringer in Urdu

رینگر
More languagesFewer languages
ringer in Bengali
রিংার, রিঙ্গার
ringer in Telugu
రింగర్, రింజర్
ringer in Malayalam
റിംഗർ
ringer in Kannada
ರಿಂಗರ್, ರಿಂಜರ್
ringer in Punjabi
ਰਿੰਗਰ
ringer in Gujarati
રિંગર, રીંગર
ringer in Odia
ରିଙ୍ଗର, ରିଙ୍ଗର୍
ringer in Nepali
रिङ्गर, रिंगर, रिन्जर

Examples of ringer in a sentence

  • The ringer tolled the workers back from the fields for vespers.
  • He is a dead ringer for his grandfather at that age.
  • Throw the shoe from behind the line, and try to get it to land circling (a ringer) or touching the far stake.

All 19 example sentences with ringer

Synonyms of ringer

Forms of ringer

pluralringers
pluralRingers

Plural of ringer: ringers

Origin of ringer

From Middle English ringere, rynger, ryngar, equivalent to ring (“to sound a bell”) + -er.

From ring (“to surround”) + -er.

Unknown. Probably so named after the custom of ringing a bell to denote the winner of a contest or competition.

Words formed from ringer

Phrases with ringer

Words that rhyme with ringer

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ringer

What does ringer mean?
Ringer means someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.
What is ringer in Hindi?
Ringer in Hindi is रिंगर, रिंगार. See Ringer meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is ringer?
Ringer can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ringer?
Ringer is pronounced /ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/.
What is the plural of ringer?
The plural of ringer is ringers.

Words near ringer in the dictionary

  1. Ringelmann effect
  2. Ringels
  3. Ringenberg
  4. Ringenbergs
  5. ringent
  6. ringer
  7. ringer equivalence number
  8. ringer equivalence numbers
  9. ringer T-shirt
  10. ringer T-shirts
  11. Ringer's lactate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ringer (page history and authors); Ringer (page history and authors); ringer (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ringer (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ringer (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-ringer.ogg.

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