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ringtone

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɹɪŋˌtəʊn//
  • United Kingdom/[ˈɹɪŋˌtʰəʊ̯n]/
  • Canada//ˈɹɪŋˌtoʊn//
  • Canada/[ˈɹɪŋˌtʰoʊ̯n] ~ [ˈɹɪŋˌtʰəʊ̯n]/
  • /[ˈɹɪŋˌtʰoːn]/

The sound made by a telephone when ringing.

noun

  1. 1

    The sound made by a telephone when ringing.

    voltage generator ringtone for installation in terminal stations of telephone communication systems for carrier wave

    The transducers used to measure cavity dynamic pressure and reed dynamic displacement are calibrated before each test, the ringtone oscillator assembly produces a sinusoidal driving pressure, with at most, a few small harmonics.

    Introduces LT1684, a ringtone-generator integrated circuit (IC) for telephone systems from Linear Technology in California. Elimination of need for optoisolators; Function of active multipole filter within the IC; Adjustment of cadence, frequency and amplitude information;

    The source and destination nodes may be equipped with ringtone-generation engines to generate ringtones. Each of the ringtones includes at least one audible tone.

  2. 2

    A customizable tone used to indicate an incoming call on a telephone, especially a mobile phone.

    I set my favorite song as my ringtone.

    So even if the primary purpose of a ringtone is to notify the user of an incoming call, the effect of a ringtone played in public cannot be ignored if the reason users choose ringtones is, in part, in order to impress others .

    This actually downloads the ringtone onto your handheld and displays a screen allowing you to save it, shown in Figure 8.12.

    There's only music so that there's new ringtones

Etymology

From ring + tone.

verb

  1. 1

    Of a telephone: to play a ringtone.

    My handheld ringtoned “Happy Days are Here Again.” I withdrew into a quieter corner of Mahogany Bar and stuck a finger in my other ear.

    The cell reception is less than zero here, but my phone was ringtoning away. I did not like the sound of that.

Forms

plural
ringtones
past tense
ringtoned
past participle
ringtoned
present participle
ringtoning
third person singular
ringtones
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).