Word.ws English Dictionary

ratchets up

ratchets up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of ratchet up.

Meaning of ratchet up

Verb

ratchet up (third-person singular simple present ratchets up, present participle ratcheting up, simple past and past participle ratcheted up)

  1. (ambitransitive) To increase; especially, to increase by degrees in a way that only gets worse, never experiencing any reprieves.
    • Near-synonyms: dial up, hike up
    Synonyms:
    dial up, hike up

Questions about ratchets up

What is ratchets up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Ratchets up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of ratchet up.

Words near ratchets up in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ratchets up (page history and authors); ratchet up (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.

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