ring in

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

ring in (third-person singular simple present rings in, present participle ringing in, simple past rang in, past participle rung in)

1. To make a phone call to (this place).

   John has just rung in sick. He won't be back til Monday, he says.

2. (transitive) To celebrate by ringing of bells or as if by ringing of the bells.

   We will ring in the New Year at a ski resort.

• call in

ring in (third-person singular simple present rings in, present participle ringing in, simple past and past participle ringed in)

1. (transitive) To encircle, to surround in a ring, engirdle.
   • 1814, [Leigh Hunt], “The Feast of the Poets”, in The Feast of the Poets, , London: for James Cawthorn, , →OCLC, page 1:

     T'other day as Apollo sat pitching his darts / Through the clouds of November, by fits and by starts, / He began to consider how long it had been, / Since the bards of Old England had all been rung in.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXXVI, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me.

   • 1888, Kipling, False Dawn:

     All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of this misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.

   • 1936, Robert Howard, Graveyard Rats:

     He was ringed in on all sides by a solid circle of gleaming red sparks that shone from the grass. Held back by their fear, the graveyard rats surrounded him, squealing their hate.

• nigrin, rining

ring in

1. imperative of ringa in