Ring

How to spell ring

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ring

What does ring mean?

1. nounA small circular band, especially one worn on a finger, or any roughly circular shape or arrangement.
2. verbTo produce or cause a clear resonant sound, as a bell does, or to call someone by telephone.

Ring in a sentence

• noun

  She slid the gold ring onto her finger before the ceremony.

• verb

  The church bells ring out across the valley every Sunday morning.

• noun

  A faint coffee ring had stained the wooden desk overnight.

• verb

  Please ring the office if your train is delayed.

Where does ring come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word actually braids together two separate Old English ancestors that happened to look and sound alike. The object sense descends from Old English hring, a Germanic word meaning a circular band or hoop, related to forms across the old Germanic languages and ultimately tied to a root meaning 'something curved or bent'. The sound sense comes from a different Old English word, hringan, meaning 'to give a metallic sound', which is thought to imitate the very noise a struck bell makes. Both lost their initial h long before modern English settled, leaving the identical spelling we use today. The chief spelling trap is the near-twin 'wring', meaning to twist and squeeze, which keeps its silent w from Old English wringan; the two were always distinct words despite sounding the same. Knowing that the circle and the bell each arrived through plain native English, with no fancy foreign dressing, is a useful reminder that 'ring' takes no silent letter at all.

How the word is built

• ring (from Old English hring, a circular band; the verb sense from Old English hringan, to sound)