dead ringer

English

Alternative forms

• dead-ringer, deadringer

Etymology

See ringer (“substitute”) and ring the changes

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

dead ringer (plural dead ringers)

1. (idiomatic) Someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for another.

   Synonyms: spitting image, double, doppelganger, lookalike

   He is a dead ringer for his grandfather at that age.

   • 2005 August 7, Edward Wyatt, “Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     In 1987, in “The Rules of Attraction,” he wrote about casual sex and obsessive drug use among bored students of a dead ringer for Bennington College, which Mr. Ellis attended.

   • 2008, Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed, Ch.1, at p.19:

     On our next date, she told me I could come back home if I wanted to. There was one condition, though: couples counseling.
     Our therapist, the sari-wearing, no-nonsense Dr. Beena Patel, was a dead ringer for Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

   • 2018 February 28, Justine Jordan, “Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday review – a dizzying debut”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     Twentysomething Alice works in publishing, so is instantly in awe of this old man offering her chocolate with a trembling hand. He is world-famous writer Ezra Blazer, a dead ringer for Philip Roth, with whom Halliday had a relationship in her 20s.

Usage notes

Used with for to convey whom or what is being resembled.

Translations

someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for another

• Dutch: evenbeeld (nl)
• French: portrait craché (fr) m
• Italian: sosia (it) m
• Japanese: そっくり様 (そっくりさま, sokkuri-sama)
• Portuguese: cara de um, focinho do outro, sósia (pt) m or f, cuspido e escarrado (pt)
• Romanian: sosie (ro) f
• Russian: двойни́к (ru) m (dvojník), точная (ru) (točnaja) ко́пия (ru) f (kópija)
• Spanish: sosias m