Ratchet

Quick meaning: Ratchet is a noun meaning A pawl, click, or detent for holding or propelling a ratchet wheel, or ratch, etc.

Meaning

A pawl, click, or detent for holding or propelling a ratchet wheel, or ratch, etc.

More Meanings

1. A mechanism composed of a ratchet wheel, or ratch and pawl.
2. A ratchet wrench.
3. (by extension) A procedure or regulation that goes in one direction, usually up.
4. (cryptography) A mechanism for generating a new unique key for each message by moving forward in a sequence.
5. A noisemaker or musical instrument where sound is generated by a board striking against a rotating gear.
6. (finance) Ellipsis of full ratchet.
7. (intransitive) To increment or decrement; especially, to offer controlled motion that can increment while resisting decrement, or vice versa.

Example Sentences

It's time to ratchet up the intensity level here.

This holddown ratchets, which allows the person loading the trailer to cinch down the straps.

Get this holddown into position, but don't start ratcheting it yet. When I say go, you start ratcheting it, OK?

Compared with the excellent scroll wheels on the Basilisk V3 and G502 X, the G203’s scroll wheel feels less defined and mushier in its ratcheting.

Word Forms

• ratchets
• ratcheting
• ratcheted

Synonyms for ratchet

Depending on context, synonyms include ratch, rachet.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include ratch, rachet, pawl, knife, creek, cove.

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