Word.ws English Dictionary

unring a bell

unring a bell verb: to reverse the irreversible; to perform the impossible.

Verb

unring a bell (third-person singular simple present unrings a bell, present participle unringing a bell, simple past unrang a bell, past participle unrung a bell)

  1. (idiomatic) To reverse the irreversible; to perform the impossible.
    • "We can't unring any bells here. There's no point in trying to second-guess anyone right now. What's done is done."2004, Fern Michaels, The Real Deal, page 413
    • “We move for a mistrial based on the testimony this morning,” Blanche said. “There’s no way to unring that bell, in our view.”2024 May 7, Victoria Bekiempis, quoting Todd Blanche, “Trump hush-money trial: Stormy Daniels describes being ‘startled’ by sexual encounter”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Forms of unring a bell

third-person singular presentunrings a bell
present participleunringing a bell
pastunrang a bell
past participleunrung a bell

Questions about unring a bell

What does unring a bell mean?
Unring a bell means to reverse the irreversible; to perform the impossible.
What part of speech is unring a bell?
Unring a bell is a verb.
What is the past tense of unring a bell?
The past tense of unring a bell is unrang a bell.

Words near unring a bell in the dictionary

  1. unrimed
  2. unrimmed
  3. unrimpled
  4. Unrine
  5. unring
  6. unring a bell
  7. unringable
  8. unringed
  9. unringing
  10. unringing a bell
  11. unrings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unring a bell (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-unring a bell.ogg.

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