Meaning & use
bell ringer
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A person who rings bells, especially the large bells in a church tower.
Grammar: Can be counted: a bell ringer, six bell ringers.
Patterns
- a bell ringer at somewhere
The bell ringer climbed the tower stairs before the Sunday service.
A team of bell ringers practices every Wednesday evening.
She became a bell ringer at her village church at age twelve.
nouncountableAmerican
A short task given to students at the very start of a lesson to get them thinking.
Grammar: American classroom usage: the bell ringer is on the board.
Patterns
- a bell ringer on something
Today's bell ringer asks you to define one word from yesterday's reading.
Students copy the bell ringer from the board while attendance is taken.
The teacher uses a bell ringer to review the last lesson.
nouncountableinformalsport
A hard hit in sports or an event that leaves a player dazed or briefly knocked out.
Grammar: Informal sports use, mostly in American football.
Patterns
- get a bell ringer
He took a bell ringer on the last play and sat out the next series.
The coach said the linebacker had just taken a bell ringer.
After that bell ringer, the trainer checked him for a concussion.
Word forms
| plural | bell ringers |
|---|
Common combinations
- church bell ringer
- The church bell ringer announced the wedding.
- bell ringer activity
- The bell ringer activity took five minutes.
- team of bell ringers
- A team of bell ringers rang a long peal.
- daily bell ringer
- The daily bell ringer was a grammar question.
- take a bell ringer
- The quarterback took a bell ringer but returned to play.
Synonyms and how they differ
- campanologist
- Campanologist is a formal, technical word for a person who studies or rings bells, while bell ringer is the common term.
- warm-up
- Warm-up is a general word for any starter task, while bell ringer is the classroom term.
- do now
- Do now is another school term for an opening activity and is used in some schools instead of bell ringer.
- sacristan
- A sacristan looks after a church's contents and may ring bells, so it is a wider role than bell ringer.
Word family
- bell noun
- a metal object that makes a ringing sound
- ring verb
- to make a bell sound
- bell ringing noun
- the activity of ringing bells
- campanology noun
- the art or study of bell ringing
Commonly confused: bell ringer or bell ringer vs. bellhop?
bell ringer vs bell ringer vs. bellhop
A bell ringer rings bells, while a bellhop carries luggage in a hotel.
Practice
As soon as students sat down, they started the ___ written on the board.
Choose one answer.
A bell ringer is a start-of-lesson task. An exit ticket comes at the end of class, and a final exam and field trip are not short opening tasks.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “bell ringer”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.