Word.ws English Dictionary

ratchetlike

ratchetlike adjective: resembling or characteristic of a ratchet.

Adjective

ratchetlike (comparative more ratchetlike, superlative most ratchetlike)

  1. Resembling or characteristic of a ratchet.
    • Tiny upward-facing hairs on the lower portion of the awns have a ratchetlike function, preventing the awns from backsliding once they’ve moved.2007 May 15, Henry Fountain, “How a Vast Ice Sheet Put the Squeeze on Earth (and Its Gravity)”, in New York Times

Forms of ratchetlike

comparativemore ratchetlike
superlativemost ratchetlike

Origin of ratchetlike

From ratchet + -like.

Questions about ratchetlike

What does ratchetlike mean?
Ratchetlike means resembling or characteristic of a ratchet.
What part of speech is ratchetlike?
Ratchetlike is an adjective.

Words near ratchetlike in the dictionary

  1. ratcheting
  2. ratcheting toadlet
  3. ratcheting toadlets
  4. ratcheting up
  5. ratchetings
  6. ratchetlike
  7. ratchetness
  8. ratchets
  9. ratchets up
  10. ratchety
  11. Ratchford

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ratchetlike (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ratchetlike.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ratchetlike. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.