People who ring bells, especially church bells, or individuals who closely resemble someone else in appearance.
From Middle English ringer, from ring + -er suffix. The 'look-alike' meaning developed in the 19th century from horse racing, where a superior horse might be substituted for an inferior one - they were 'ringers' because they could 'ring in' a winner.
English change ringing is one of the world's most mathematically complex musical art forms - teams of bell ringers can create patterns that take hours to complete without repeating! The term 'dead ringer' for an exact look-alike comes from horse racing fraud, but today we use it innocently to describe celebrity look-alikes and doppelgangers.
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