dead ringer

• deadringer
• dead-ringer

See ringer (“substitute”) and ring the changes

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dead ringer (plural dead ringers)

1. (idiomatic) Someone or something that very closely resembles another; someone or something easily mistaken for another.

   Synonym: spitting image

   He is a dead ringer for his grandfather at that age.

   • 2005 August 7, Edward Wyatt, “Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     In 1987, in “The Rules of Attraction,” he wrote about casual sex and obsessive drug use among bored students of a dead ringer for Bennington College, which Mr. Ellis attended.

   • 2018 February 28, Justine Jordan, “Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday review – a dizzying debut”, in The Guardian‎:

     Twentysomething Alice works in publishing, so is instantly in awe of this old man offering her chocolate with a trembling hand. He is world-famous writer Ezra Blazer, a dead ringer for Philip Roth, with whom Halliday had a relationship in her 20s.