doorbell vs ringer

doorbell

noun
  • A device on or adjacent to an outer door for announcing one's presence. It can be mechanical, directly sounding a bell, or a button that electrically sounds a chime or buzzer inside the building. 

  • A button that activates an electric doorbell. 

verb
  • To ring many doorbells of (target people or an area) in an effort to contact people and thereby spread information or solicit. 

  • To ring many doorbells in an effort to contact people and thereby spread information or solicit. 

ringer

noun
  • Someone who rings, especially a bell ringer. 

  • A stockman, a cowboy. 

  • A horse fraudulently entered in a race using the name of another horse. 

  • A person, animal, or entity which resembles another so closely as to be taken for the other, now usually in the phrase dead ringer. 

  • A fraudulently cloned motor vehicle. 

  • An officer having the specified number of rings (denoting rank) on the uniform sleeve. 

  • A person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team. 

  • A top performer. 

  • A ringer T-shirt. 

  • The champion shearer of a shearing shed. 

  • A crowbar. 

  • In the game of horseshoes, the event of the horseshoe landing around the pole. 

  • Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor. 

  • A look-alike. 

  • A game of marbles where players attempt to knock each other's marbles out of a ring drawn on the ground. 

How often have the words doorbell and ringer occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )