Word.ws English Dictionary

ringy-dingy

ringy-dingy noun: a telephone ring.

Noun

ringy-dingy (plural ringy-dingies)

  1. (colloquial) A telephone ring.
    • I stumbled to my car to call the barn owner. After many ringy-dingies, I gave up.1994 September 20, Linda Ballou, “BODY WATCH : Twice Stung, Thrice Shy […]”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on...
    • Each time you answered a call, while the caller was still hearing “one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies,” you heard a recording offering four ways to handle the call: “Press 1 to accept, 2 to send to voice mail, 3 to listen in on voice mail, or 4 to accept and record the call.”2009 March 11, David Pogue, “One Number to Ring Them All”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 01 Apr 2009
  2. (colloquial) A call; a ring (an instance of calling someone on the telephone).
    • Andrew Vautier made a ringy-dingy...
      > Give me a call!
      Give me a house!1996 April 16, Puter, “(no subject)”, in alt.romance.chat (Usenet), archived from the original on 02 Oct 2025
    • Give me a ringy-dingy or a number to call and you'll see!! ;)2000 July 27, Zabana Brandon, “OT: I just met a *real* sweetheart!!”, in alt.tv.star-trek.voyager (Usenet), archived from the original on 02 Oct 2025

Examples of ringy-dingy in a sentence

  • Her “first significant wig,” she said, was for Ernestine, the snorting, power-drunk telephone-operator character (“One ringy-dingy!”) made famous on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.”2016 May 23, Emma Allen, “Fortunate”, in The New Yorker, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original...
  • I truly appreciated Dubya taking time out from his busy war to give me a ringy-dingy.2006 November 7, Boron Elgar, “Raise Your Hand If You Got A Call From George W.Bush Today”, in alt.fan.cecil-adams (Usenet), archived from...

Forms of ringy-dingy

pluralringy-dingies
alternative formringie dingie
alternative formringie-dingie
alternative formringy dingy

Origin of ringy-dingy

From rhyming ring and ding with -y. Used by comedian Lily Tomlin imitating a telephone operator (“one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies …”).

Questions about ringy-dingy

What does ringy-dingy mean?
Ringy-dingy means a telephone ring.
How do you use ringy-dingy in a sentence?
Her “first significant wig,” she said, was for Ernestine, the snorting, power-drunk telephone-operator character (“One ringy-dingy!”) made famous on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.”
What part of speech is ringy-dingy?
Ringy-dingy is a noun.
What is the plural of ringy-dingy?
The plural of ringy-dingy is ringy-dingies.

Words near ringy-dingy in the dictionary

  1. ringxiety
  2. ringy
  3. ringy dingies
  4. ringy dingy
  5. ringy-dingies
  6. ringy-dingy
  7. Rini
  8. rining
  9. Rininger
  10. Riningers
  11. Rinis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ringy-dingy (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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Cite this entry: “ringy-dingy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ringy-dingy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.