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Question
#73125. mollyhawk
asks:
Where does the expression "dead ringer" come from?
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zbeckabee 
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A ringer is a horse substituted for another of similar appearance in order to defraud the bookies. A horse that is taken through the country and trotted under a false name and pedigree is called a 'ringer.'
Dead, in the sense of lifeless, is so commonly used that we tend to ignore its other meanings. The meaning that's relevant here is exact or precise. This is demonstrated in many phrases; 'dead shot', 'dead centre', 'dead heat', etc.
So, 'dead ringer' is literally the same as 'exact duplicate'. It first came into use soon after the word ringer itself, in the US at the end of the 19th century.
 http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dead%20ringer.html
Dec 09 06, 9:09 PM
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skysmom65
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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'. More: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/?date=20010515
Dec 09 06, 10:20 PM
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