ratcheting

Pluralratchetings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of ratchet.

   Investors watched mortgage rates ratcheting upward month after month.

   Both campaigns kept ratcheting up the rhetoric ahead of the vote.

   Note

   The final t stays single, as in budgeting and pocketing, because the stress falls on the first syllable. With up or down the form describes a climb or fall in steps, as in ratcheting up the pressure or ratcheting down costs, and it keeps the picture of the toothed wheel and pawl: each step holds, and the movement does not slip back.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of making something increase or decrease by steps, or a single instance of it.

   Economists warned that the steady ratcheting of interest rates would slow home sales.

   Repeated ratchetings of the security rules frustrated travelers.

   Similarescalation

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A conjurer's trick in which a metal object is bent back and forth beforehand to cause metal fatigue, so that it can later be broken by rubbing.

   The skeptic showed that the famous spoon-breaking act depended on ratcheting done before the show.

   Ratcheting lets a performer snap a key with what looks like a gentle stroke of the finger.

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