Dictionary

ratting en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (archaic, uncountable, usually) The blood sport of setting a dog upon rats confined in a pit to see how many he will kill in a given time.
   • Such men usually satisfied their needs for leisure in the patronage of saloons or in such “blood” sports as cockfights or rattings. 2008, Benjamin G. Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game, page 12:
   • Bear and bull baiting, dog fights, cockfighting, ratting, and other blood sports were attacked as un-Christian […] 2001, Colin D. Howell, Blood, Sweat and Cheers: Sport and the Making of Modern Canada:
   • This was the pit for dog fights, cockfights and rat killing. […] At a time when ratting was largely frowned upon by respectable people in Britain, it gained considerable support in France […] 2012, Jan Bondeson, Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities:
   • Henry Mayhew, the nineteenth-century chronicler of London's underworld, described the frenzied activity of one ratting contest. A terrier — the best of ratting dogs — was placed into a pit with 50 rats. 1993, Ronald H. Fritze, James Stuart Olson, Randy Roberts, Reflections on World Civilization: A Reader, volume 2, page 102:
   • The RSPCA were well aware that ratting was legally ambiguous, and when they received a report of a conviction for ratting in Hull in 1868 they doubted the legality of it. 2008, Rob Boddice, A History of Attitudes and Behaviours Toward Animals in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain, page 257:
2. (uncountable, usually) A vocation involving the pest control of rats, typically using a working terrier.
3. (uncountable, usually) Desertion of one's principles.
4. (uncountable, usually) Working as a scab, against trade union policies.

Forms

Deriveds

ratting cap

Relateds

rat snake · rat terrier · rat trap · rattrap

Synonyms

rat-baiting

ratting en · VERB

Meanings

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present) present participle and gerund of rat
   form of rat
   • Don't go ratting to the police about what happened.