May 15, 2001

dead ringer, doppelgänger

I'm interested in the etymology of the phrase dead ringer. I heard that its origins are tied to being buried alive and the idea of a doppelgänger or double.

A doppelgänger is 'a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person'; in German it means 'double goer'. This spiritual being inhabits the works of German romantic writers, and is typically used to symbolize a character's internal conflict. It's also a literary device used in the horror fiction of English language authors such as Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker. A doppelgänger is usually sinister and exists to haunt the living person. An encounter with one's spiritual double may mean imminent death, and if the double is attacked, the living person will soon die or commit suicide.

Fear of being buried alive is also a common literary theme in 18th- and 19th-century literature, first in Germany, and then in France, Britain, and elsewhere. (Poe's "The Black Cat" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" are American examples.) This fear was not unfounded. Until the 20th century, medical signs and criteria of physical death were unreliable, and there are real cases of people being buried prematurely. A widely circulated but untrue explanation of the term dead ringer is connected to the practice of tying a rope to the wrist of a buried person, the rope being attached to a bell outside the coffin. If the person was indeed buried alive, the bell could be used to signal for help. (If you want the lugubrious and humorous details about this part of our social history, read Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, by Dr. Jan Bondeson.)

Outside of literature, the term doppelgänger is sometimes used to mean 'a (living or dead) person who closely resembles someone else'. The term dead ringer has the same meaning, but it's not a literary term. For example, maybe your boyfriend is a "dead ringer" for Brad Pitt.

In this use, the adjective dead means 'perfect, absolute, exact, utmost', in reference to death being the final step in life. Without the adjective "dead," the noun ringer just means 'a double or counterpart'. So dead ringer means 'exact double'.

But ringer has other pejorative meanings dating from the late 1800s. The basic sense is 'an impostor or deceptive substitute unfairly entered into a contest or competition'. It can refer to a superior horse entered in a race to substitute for a slower horse, usually under an alias and with its appearance altered to resemble the inferior horse. Or a ringer could be an inferior horse substituted for a superior one that has been sold. Also in sports, a ringer is a professional athlete deceptively substituted for an amateur. In gambling games, a ringer is a marked or specially ordered deck of cards, a loaded or otherwise modified pair of dice, a dishonest dealer, or an expert card player posing as a novice. A counterfeit gem or coin can be called a ringer. Other related meanings include: 'an outsider; uninvited guest; intruder'.

The noun ringer comes from the verb ring (in), in the early 1800s meaning 'to falsify, disguise, or alter' or 'to introduce fraudulently; substitute one person/thing for another'. In this use it's sometimes spelled "wring (in)." Ring (in) can also mean 'to join with others, usually in an intrusive way'. These uses of ring (in) are probably connected to the meaning 'to announce by ringing a bell'. According to the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, there is also a probable association with the slang expression ring the changes 'to substitute counterfeit money in various ways', a pun on the the standard sense 'to go through all the variations in ringing a peal of bells'. As an alternative origin for ringer, Thomas L. Clark's The Dictionary of Gambling and Gaming says it was originally a finger ring with a small flange used for palming cards.

Carol