The AI-powered English dictionary
plural ringers
Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer. quotations examples
Pull, if ye never pull′d before;Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.
1863, Jean Ingelow, High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire
(mining) A crowbar. examples
(games) In the game of horseshoes, the event of the horseshoe landing around the pole. examples
(uncountable, games) A game of marbles where players attempt to knock each other's marbles out of a ring drawn on the ground. examples
A ringer T-shirt. quotations examples
[…] shabby baseball caps, faded and worn-out T-shirts, ringers and polos with artificially aged hems […]
2007, Descant, number 138, page 28
The shirts were light blue heather ringers with royal blue trim on the necks and sleeves.
2011, Buck Peden, Baseball, Golf, Wars, Women & Puppies: An Autobiography, page 278
(UK, dialect) A top performer. examples
(Australia) The champion shearer of a shearing shed. quotations examples
Click goes his shears; click, click, click. Wide are the blows, and his hand is moving quick, The ringer looks round, for he lost it by a blow, And he curses that old shearer with the bare belled ewe.
1891 December 5, The Bacchus Marsh Express, Victoria, page 7, column 7
(Australia) A stockman, a cowboy. quotations examples
The ringers are the stockmen on a station. The cattle pass through their hands before the drovers lift them and take them along the stock routes that lead to the killing pens in cities.
1964, Alec Bolton, Walkabout′s Australia, Walkabout magazine, page 107
This vast holding is run by six ringers and six boys. A ringer is a qualified stationhand and a boy is a trainee. It takes four years for a boy to become a ringer.
1987, Geoffrey Atkinson, Philip Quirk., The Australian Adventure: The Explorer′s Guide to the Island Continent, page 175
Most people associated with the Australian beef industry believe the ringer′s skill of throwing cattle by the tail to be a practice that is purely Australian. There is ample evidence however, that it was practised in South and Central America long before it was developed here.
2005, Jake Drake, The Wild West in Australia and America, page 156
(slang) Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.
(sports) A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team. examples
(horse racing) A horse fraudulently entered in a race using the name of another horse. examples
(UK, slang) A fraudulently cloned motor vehicle. quotations
I had heard early on in my career about 'ringers': cars that were stolen and cloned, but it was 1993 before I was to experience this first-hand.
2020, Tom Hartley, Tom Hartley: The Dealmaker
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). quotations examples
I mean, he knows we never handed off the briefcase, but he never asked for it back. The million bucks was never in the briefcase! The asshole was hoping that they would kill her! You threw out a ringer for a ringer!
1998, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, The Big Lebowski (motion picture), spoken by The Dude (Jeff Bridges)
(UK, military, informal, in combination) An officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve. quotations
A group of naval one- and two-ringers were chatting by the office door with a few ratings, complete with kit-bags and oilskins.
2012, John Harris, The Lonely Voyage
The senior officer of the escort was an RN two and a half ringer who had a reputation of being one of the best.
2013, Dudley Pope, Convoy