ringer

Meaning

Noun

• Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.
• A crowbar.
• In the game of horseshoes, the event of the horseshoe landing around the pole.
• A game of marbles where players attempt to knock each other's marbles out of a ring drawn on the ground.
• A ringer T-shirt.
• A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team.
• A horse fraudulently entered in a race using the name of another horse.
• A person, animal, or entity which resembles another so closely as to be taken for the other, now usually in the phrase dead ringer.
• A fraudulently cloned motor vehicle.
• A top performer.
• The champion shearer of a shearing shed.
• A stockman, a cowboy.
• Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.
• An officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve.

Origin

• From Middle English ringere, rynger, ryngar, equivalent to ring + -er.
• From ring + -er.
• Probably from ring the changes.
• Unknown. Probably so named after the custom of ringing a bell to denote the winner of a contest or competition.
• Perhaps dissimilated from Middle English wringere.
• ring + -er, from the noun.