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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

ringer.

Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/
  1. Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.

  2. A crowbar.

Where this word comes from

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

noun/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/
  1. A person who places rings or bands on a bird's leg.

  2. A stockman, a cowboy.

    Australia
  3. In the game of horseshoes, the event of the horseshoe landing around the pole.

  4. A game of marbles where players attempt to knock each other's marbles out of a ring drawn on the ground.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

From ring (“to surround”) + -er.

noun/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/
  1. A top performer.

    UK · dialectal
  2. The champion shearer of a shearing shed.

    Australia
Where this word comes from

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

noun/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/
  1. Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.

    slang
  2. A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team.

    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.
  3. A horse fraudulently entered in a race using the name of another horse.

  4. A fraudulently cloned (or cut-and-shut) motor vehicle.

    UK · slang
Where this word comes from

Some senses may derive from ring the changes (“run through variations; enliven; pass counterfeit money; trick a shopkeeper into giving too much change”).

noun/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/
  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!
Where this word comes from

Unclear. Compare ring of truth, and see the "fake, impostor" sense at Etymology 4.

noun/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/
  1. An officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve.

    UK · in-compounds · informal
  2. A ringer T-shirt.

Where this word comes from

From ring + -er, from the noun.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.