Comment by posterboy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by posterboy | Hacker News Reader

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Not that it matters but I looked up ringer and I beleive wringer is essentially correct but the w was lost and I'm not sure.

We used to speak of substitute players when a team needed to fill a spot with randoms, what is elsewhere called "ringer", nothing about cheating. There is an Old Norse word or something that is translated "fighter" . I don't remember its spelling and could not find the entry immediately. W would become lost in Norse, I guesd (Odin, Vatenfal). So I maintain the hunch that it is identical to wrestling because that's Ringen in German and wringen in Dutch. Again, allusion to the ring in which they fight is petty. Wrestling has a rich tradition but not endowed with literacy. This could easily lead to confusion next to war. Corrolary, a drug ring is not circular, since border running involves bands of war, though they could do a round call.

Hope this helps;

Dead Ringer (disambiguation) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Ringer_(disambiguation)

Wringer (disambiguation) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wringer_(disambiguation)

> from 19th-century horse-racing slang

There's hardly any worse "source" for etymology than that kind of jargon.

> "ringer" was a late nineteenth-century term for a duplicate, usually with implications of dishonesty, ...

Is that it?

> Hope this helps

Not in the slightest, no. If anything it confirms my bias that editors are gullible.

Which, to get back onto topic, would mean to think that the motivation was not exactly what is reported here, but something come a long way.

> There's hardly any worse "source" for etymology than that kind of jargon.

Care to provide attribution links for that claim?

  etymology:'Dead Ringer'

  etymology:'Wringer'

Hope this helps.

I absolutely don't think so, no. Any link is unlikely to help you read and understand my initial comment, seeing that you communicate in bleep bloop

As you are obviously unable to admit that you are incorrect, and are incapable of preforming a basic search,

  it would seem pointless on my part to continue dialog with you.

Hope this helps.

Still doesn't help. Horse back riding is in principle very closely related to ancient warfare, so if anything it supports my point, but new york race tracks with betting and especially cheating being the very topic of your poorly sourced folk etymology is effable.

That's interesting, wasn't aware of that particular meaning.

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