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ringer

/ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/noun

ringer is a noun meaning “Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-I-N-G-E-R and has 2 syllables, and it appears 1.1 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of ringer is ringers.

What does ringer mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.

  2. 2

    A crowbar.

  3. 3

    A person who places rings or bands on a bird's leg.

  4. 4

    AustraliaA stockman, a cowboy.

  5. 5

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

  6. 6

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

  7. 7

    UKA top performer.

  8. 8

    AustraliaThe champion shearer of a shearing shed.

  9. 9

    slangAny person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.

  10. 10

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

    Near-synonym: hustler

  11. 11

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

  12. 12

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

  13. 13

    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!

  14. 14

    UKinformalAn officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve.

  15. 15

    A ringer T-shirt.

noun

as Ringer
  1. 1

    slangA fan of the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and/or the film trilogy based on it.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce ringer?

  • /ˈɹɪŋə(ɹ)/

Ringer has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-ringer.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of ringer

  • ringers plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is ringer?

Ringer appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 26,776th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Where does ringer come from?

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

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).