ringer

noun

1. Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer.

   “Pull, if ye never pull′d before; Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.”

2. A crowbar.
3. A person who places rings or bands on a bird's leg.
4. (Australia)A stockman, a cowboy.

   “1964, Alec Bolton, Walkabout′s Australia, Walkabout magazine, page 107, 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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

5. In the game of horseshoes, the event of the horseshoe landing around the pole.
6. (uncountable)A game of marbles where players attempt to knock each other's marbles out of a ring drawn on the ground.
7. (UK, dialectal)A top performer.
8. (Australia)The champion shearer of a shearing shed.

   “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.”

9. (slang)Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.
10. A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team.

    “Near-synonym: hustler”

    “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.”

11. A horse fraudulently entered in a race using the name of another horse.
12. (UK, slang)A fraudulently cloned (or cut-and-shut) motor vehicle.

    “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.”

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!”

    “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!”

14. (UK, in-compounds, informal)An officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve.

    “A group of naval one- and two-ringers were chatting by the office door with a few ratings, complete with kit-bags and oilskins.”

    “The senior officer of the escort was an RN two and a half ringer who had a reputation of being one of the best.”

15. A ringer T-shirt.

    “[…] shabby baseball caps, faded and worn-out T-shirts, ringers and polos with artificially aged hems […]”

    “The shirts were light blue heather ringers with royal blue trim on the necks and sleeves.”

16. (slang)A fan of the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and/or the film trilogy based on it.

    “Readers flocked online to articulate their angst, discovering 400 websites where "Ringers" congregated to converse in Quenya – one of Tolkien's fictional languages – and discuss such burning issues as whether elves have pointy ears.”

    “One Ringer travels all over and takes pictures of her "Lord of the Rings" figurines.”

    “Trekkers, Whovians and Ringers were out in force over the weekend as sci-fi and fantasy fans descended on Cardiff for the city's Film and Comic Convention.”

name

1. A surname.