Word.ws English Dictionary

ratchety

ratchety adjective: resembling or characteristic of a ratchet.

Adjective

ratchety (comparative more ratchety, superlative most ratchety)

  1. Resembling or characteristic of a ratchet
    • The parking brake pivoted with well-calibrated resistance and no ratchety noise.2007 August 26, Lawrence Ulrich, “Germans Land on Saturn and Things Shape Up”, in New York Times
  2. Moving in jerks.

Forms of ratchety

comparativemore ratchety
superlativemost ratchety

Origin of ratchety

From ratchet + -y.

Questions about ratchety

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

Words near ratchety in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ratchety (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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