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 d. 1400. Chaucer, Good Women, 1887. Judge infernal Mynos Now cometh thy lotte! now comestow on the rynge.

]. Gesta Grayorum, 'Progr. of Eliz.,' ii. 54. His highness' master of the ordnance claimes to have all peeces gul'd in the touch-hole or broken within the RINGE.

1596. Shakspeare, Hamlet, ii. 2, 448. Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not crack'd within THE RING.

1632. Jonson, Magnetic Lady. Light gold, and crack'd within the ring. [This quot. also illustrates sense 1.]

1887. Francis, Saddle and Mocassin. Between them they rung in a cold deck in a faro-box.

1889. Lester Wallack, Memories [Scribner, iv. 723]. They want to ring me into it, but I do not see anything in it I can do.

RING-DROPPER (or -FALLER), subs. phr. (thieves').—See quot. 1851-61: hence ring-dropping: see FAWNEY-DROPPER.—AWDELEY (1567); Parker (1781).

1843. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, xxxvii. Tom's evil genius did not mark him out as the prey of ring-droppers or any of those bloodless sharpers.

1849. Macaulay, Hist. of Eng., xviii. The crowd of pilferers, ring-droppers, and sharpers who infested the capital.

1851-61. Mayhew, London Lab., i. 389. In ring-dropping we pretend to have found a ring, and ask some simple-looking fellow if it's good gold, as it's only just picked up [they then get the fellow to buy].

Ringer, subs. (common).—A bell; a tinkler. Fr. battante; brandillante.

Ring-man, subs. phr. (old).—The middle, or ring finger: cf. dark-mans; RUFF-MANS, &c.

1544. Ascham, Toxophilus, 137. When a man shooteth, the might of his shoote lyeth on the foremost finger, and on the ring-man.

2. See Ring, subs. 1.

Ring-tail, subs. (military).—A recruit: see Snooker.

Ring-tailed roarer, subs. phr. (American).—The nonsense name of some imaginary beast.—Century.

Rink. To get out of one's RINK, verb. phr. (old colloquial).—To sow wild oats. [Rink = a course, a race, ring, or circle.]

Rinse, subs. (common).—Any sort of potable; lap (q. v.). Hence as verb. = to drink; to lush (q. v.).

Riot Act. To read the Riot Act, verb. phr. (colloquial).—To administer a jobation; to reprove.

Riotous-living, subs. phr. (colloquial).—Luxuries. [Cf Luke xv. 13.]

Rip, subs. (common).—A reprobate; a rake (q. v.). Hence anything censurable: as a SCREW (q. v.) of a horse (Grose), 'a shabby mean fellow' (Grose): sometimes in jest.

1827. Peake, Comfortable Lodgings, i. 2. Roue. So, at last at Paris; and I'll be bound I'm the greatest rip in it.

1853. Dickens, Bleak House, lv. If it's ever broke to him that his rip of a brother has turned up I could wish to break it myself.

1892. Pall Mall Gaz., 20 Oct., 6, 1. The prisoner said a rip (an Americanism for low woman) has told him that she had been employed by the police to track him.

1900. Kipling, Stalky & Co., 25. 'Hold on, till King loses his temper,' said Beetle. 'He's a libellous old rip, an' he'll be in a ravin' paddywhack.'

Verb. (old: now chiefly American).—1. To take one's own course; to go as one will: to tear along; to drive furiously: