Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A long, spirally curled lock of hair.
  • noun A small circle or ring.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A circle, in a poetical or unusual sense; a ring other than a finger-ring: used loosely.
  • noun A curl of hair; usually, a long and spirally curled lock, as distinguished from one of the small naturally curled locks of short hair.
  • noun An English collectors' name for certain satyrid butterflies: thus, Epinephele hyperanthus is the ringlet, and Cœnonympha tiphon is the small ringlet.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A small ring; a small circle; specifically, a fairy ring.
  • noun A curl; especially, a curl of hair.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small ring.
  • noun A lock, tress.
  • noun A brown butterfly with numerous small rings on under wings, Aphantopus hyperantus, of the family Nymphalidae.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of various butterflies belonging to the family Satyridae
  • noun a round shape formed by a series of concentric circles (as formed by leaves or flower petals)
  • noun a strand or cluster of hair
  • noun a small ring

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • She wears one long ringlet (presumably one on each side); and this ringlet is a characteristic feature of female heads in archaic Greek art.

    Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers 1891

  • But the dreadlocks look — an intense kind of ringlet where strands fuse into a flail of single ropes — is really West Indian in origin.

    In Africa, where there are dreadlocks, there are white tourists being preyed upon 2010

  • None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861 Various

  • None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • None so keen as these young misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment.

    Elsie Venner Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • She always felt sorry for Mamie Eisenhower whenever she was photographed in a hat perched over her jauntily sad, ringlet-like bangs.

    Book World: 'Being Polite to Hitler' rounds out profile of an American family Rachel Basch 2011

  • She always felt sorry for Mamie Eisenhower whenever she was photographed in a hat perched over her jauntily sad, ringlet-like bangs.

    Book World: 'Being Polite to Hitler' rounds out profile of an American family Rachel Basch 2011

  • She watched in her huge dressing-table mirror as one of the maids pulled a ringlet down to its full length, each hair gleaming like gold.

    Uprising Margaret Peterson Haddix 2011

  • A silver-washed fritillary – all tawny orange with black cryptic wing texts and flashes of mother-of-pearl – flew in and was immediately mobbed by ringlet and meadow-brown butterflies.

    Country diary: Wenlock Edge 2011

  • These last few have been days to hold on to: bright sunshine through fat-bottomed clouds; ringlet butterflies flickering over flowering grasses; yellow-and-black-banded cinnabar moth caterpillars twitching as they spun threads to tie themselves to ragwort; bright pink lip-gloss heads of pyramidal orchids – these things once observed becoming dearly held.

    Country diary: Wenlock Edge 2011

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