English

edit

Etymology

edit

From rat +‎ -hood.

Noun

edit

rathood (uncountable)

  1. The quality or state of being a rat.
    • 1891, Ambrose Bierce, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians:
      Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black darkness, an infinite tranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood, and well assured of the trap that he was in, remembering all and nowise alarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength of his enemy, to plan his defense.
    • 2004, Eric Flint, Dave Freer, The Rats, the Bats and the Ugly, →ISBN:
      If we let them deal thus with our Capo—why, then there is neither honesty, rathood nor good fellowship in us.
    • 2008, Marjorie Garber, William R Kenan Jr, Profiling Shakespeare, →ISBN, page 98:
      Again the woman comes up short—a Renaissance witch, it seems, could not even aspire to mimetic rathood, but instead had to content herself with a curtailed or foreshortened version of that condition.

Anagrams

edit