rats

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of rat.

   Rats scurried across the cellar floor when the light came on.

   The traps caught three rats in a single night.

   Note

   A regular plural, and one that carries every meaning of the singular: a cellar full of rats, but also a ring of informers, a crew of strikebreakers, or the regulars who haunt one particular spot. Context does the sorting. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present-tense form and as an exclamation, so a sentence-opening "Rats!" is rarely about rodents.

2. 2
   interjectioncolloquial

   Said to express annoyance, frustration, or mild disgust; a softer stand-in for damn or darn.

   Rats! The printer jammed right before I had to hand in the report.

   Oh, rats, I forgot to charge my phone overnight again.

   Similardrat, darn, dang, shoot, blast

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of rat.

   He rats out his accomplices the moment investigators offer him a deal.

   Whenever profit is at stake, she rats on her closest business partners.

   Note

   The present-tense form after he, she or it is spelled exactly like the plural noun, so only the sentence frame tells them apart: "she rats" is a verb, "the rats" a noun. When it means informing, the person betrayed comes after on. Less familiar meanings ride on the same form: hunting rats, backcombing hair in American use, and a regional sense of scratching or scoring.

4. 4
   interjectioncolloquial

   Said to express disbelief or skepticism about something just claimed.

   Rats, there's no way you ran the whole marathon in under three hours.

   Rats! You expect anyone to swallow that excuse?

   Similarnonsense, rubbish

   Note

   Here the exclamation is aimed at what someone has just said rather than at bad luck: it waves a claim away as nonsense. Arthur Conan Doyle, writing in 1925–26, has a character answer a denial with "Rats! You can tell me, Tom." To tell it from the cry of annoyance, look at what follows. Disbelief usually turns straight back on the speaker with a challenge or a demand.

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