RINGLEADER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does ringleader mean? 

• RINGLEADER (noun)
  The noun RINGLEADER has 1 sense:

1. a person who leads (especially in illicit activities)

  Familiarity information: RINGLEADER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RINGLEADER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who leads (especially in illicit activities)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("ringleader" is a kind of...):

firebrand; inciter; instigant; instigator; provoker (someone who deliberately foments trouble)

 Context examples 

He's the cook, and the ringleader too.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Now, of the two men, it is clear that the one who wrote the ‘at’ and ‘to’ was the ringleader.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But the colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized, and thought no punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands; which some of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forward with the butt-ends of their pikes into my reach.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I was bewildered; it seemed a thing so hopeless he was asking—he, the old buccaneer, the ringleader throughout.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Or rather, I suppose the truth was this, that all hands were disaffected by the example of the ringleaders—only some more, some less; and a few, being good fellows in the main, could neither be led nor driven any further.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)