Ringy-dingy

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A telephone ring. colloquial

    "I stumbled to my car to call the barn owner. After many ringy-dingies, I gave up."

  2. 2
    A call; a ring (an instance of calling someone on the telephone). colloquial

    "Andrew Vautier made a ringy-dingy... > Give me a call! Give me a house!"

Example

More examples

"I stumbled to my car to call the barn owner. After many ringy-dingies, I gave up."

Etymology

From rhyming ring and ding with -y. Used by comedian Lily Tomlin imitating a telephone operator (“one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingies …”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.