ratting

English

Verb

ratting

1. present participle and gerund of rat

   Don't go ratting to the police about what happened.

Noun

ratting (usually uncountable, plural rattings)

1. (archaic) The blood sport of setting a dog upon rats confined in a pit to see how many he will kill in a given time.
   • 1993, Ronald H. Fritze, James Stuart Olson, Randy Roberts, Reflections on World Civilization: A Reader, volume 2, page 102:

     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.

   • 2001, Colin D. Howell, Blood, Sweat and Cheers: Sport and the Making of Modern Canada:

     Bear and bull baiting, dog fights, cockfighting, ratting, and other blood sports were attacked as un-Christian […]

   • 2008, Rob Boddice, A History of Attitudes and Behaviours Toward Animals in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain, page 257:

     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, Benjamin G. Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game, page 12:

     Such men usually satisfied their needs for leisure in the patronage of saloons or in such “blood” sports as cockfights or rattings.

   • 2012, Jan Bondeson, Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities:

     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 […]

2. (uncountable) A vocation involving the pest control of rats, typically using a working terrier.
3. Desertion of one's principles.
4. Working as a scab, against trade union policies.

Derived terms

• ratting cap

See also

• (blood sport): rat-baiting

Anagrams

• tarting