ringer

1 a person who rings church bells (as for summoning the congregation) [syn: toller, bell ringer]

2 a person who is almost identical to another [syn: dead ringer, clone]

3 a contestant entered in a competition under false pretenses

4 (horseshoes) the successful throw of a horseshoe or quoit so as to encircle a stake or peg

English

Etymology

From ring.

Pronunciation

• /'rɪŋə/

  Rhymes: -ɪŋə(r)

Noun

1. Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.

   19th century - Jean Ingelow - The Brides of Enderby

   Pull, if ye never pull'd before;

   Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.

2. In the game of horseshoes, when the horseshoe lands around the pole.
3. A person, animal, or entity which resembles another so closely as to be taken for the other. (Now usually in the phrase dead ringer)
4. a stockman; a drover
5. A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team.

Derived terms

• dead ringer

Ringer can refer to:

• An impostor
• The Ringer (2005 film), a comedy film starring Johnny Knoxville and Katherine Heigl
• The mechanism in a telephone that announces an incoming call, or plays a ringtone
• A decoy
• One who plays bells, especially as related to campanology
• An ornithologist trained in bird ringing
• In horseshoes, a shoe that encircles the stake and is counted as 3 points
• Ringer T-shirt, a style of T-shirt with a different color of fabric around the neck and sleeves
• Ringer (comics), a Marvel Comics villain
• Road course ringer, a non-NASCAR driver hired by a team to race at a road course
• The Ringer (episode), the first episode of The Legend of Zelda cartoon series
• A member of Tolkien fandom
  • Ringers: Lord of the Fans, a documentary on the subject
• In role playing games, a player character who is a direct or near-direct copy of a character in a work of popular fiction (derived from "dead ringer")
• A game piece used for scoring in the 2007 FIRST Robotics Competition game Rack 'n Roll
• A stolen car whose vehicle identification number plate has been replaced

People

• Armand T. Ringer, a pseudonym used by American writer Martin Gardner
• Derek Ringer (1956-), Scottish rally co-driver
• Frederick Ringer (1840-1908), British merchant
• Mark Ringer (1959-), American writer and theatre director
• Sydney Ringer, a British clinician and pharmacologist, best known for inventing Lactated Ringer's solution

See also

• Dead ringer

agent, alternate, alternative, analogy, backup, blagueur, bluff, bluffer, change, changeling, charlatan, comparison, copy, counterfeit, deputy, double, dummy, equal, equivalent, ersatz, exchange, fake, faker, fill-in, fourflusher, fraud, ghost, ghostwriter, humbug, imitation, impersonator, impostor, locum tenens, makeshift, malingerer, metaphor, metonymy, mountebank, next best thing, personnel, phony, picture, pinch hitter, portrait, poser, poseur, pretender, proxy, quack, quacksalver, quackster, relief, replacement, representative, reserves, saltimbanco, second string, secondary, sham, shammer, sign, simulacrum, spares, spit, spitting image, stand-in, sub, substituent, substitute, substitution, succedaneum, superseder, supplanter, surrogate, symbol, synecdoche, third string, token, understudy, utility player, vicar, vice-president, vice-regent