ringtone

Pluralringtones

Formsringtones, ringtoning, ringtoned

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A sound that a phone, especially a mobile phone, plays when someone calls and that its user can select or change.

   He assigned a different ringtone to each of his contacts so he knows who is calling without looking.

   In the early 2000s, people paid real money for short polyphonic ringtones of popular songs.

   Note

   Here the word stops naming a signal and starts naming a choice. You set a song as your ringtone, download one, or assign one to a contact. Because it plays in public, it also says something about its owner. The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer argued in 2004 that people pick ringtones partly to impress others. In "A Certain Romance" (2006), Alex Turner complains of music that exists only so there are new ringtones.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The sound a telephone makes while it is ringing.

   A faint ringtone drifted up from somewhere inside the couch cushions.

   The room filled with competing ringtones as everyone's phone rang at once.

   Similarring

   Note

   It is simply ring plus tone, and its oldest uses belong to engineers. Telephone hardware is built around it: a ringtone generator, a ringtone oscillator, Linear Technology's LT1684 ringtone-generator chip. Here the word names the signal the equipment produces, not anything a caller picks. The customizable alert came later, once handsets let people choose the sound.

3. 3
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   Of a telephone: to play its ringtone when a call comes in.

   Phones that ringtone in the quiet car draw glares from the other passengers.

   His phone ringtoned twice before he managed to dig it out of his bag.

   Similarring

   Note

   The noun has been put to work as a verb, and it runs both ways. With an object, the object is the tune itself: in Herb Borkland's DOG$ (2015) a handheld "ringtoned 'Happy Days are Here Again.'" Without one, the phone simply sounds: in Arthur Slade's Amber Fang (2019) a phone is "ringtoning away." It conjugates regularly (ringtones, ringtoning, ringtoned) and takes its meaning from the customizable call tone.

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