ratting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of rat.

   Workers accused him of ratting to management about the union meeting.

   Her dog goes ratting in the warehouse most evenings.

   Note

   One spelling carries every sense of the verb. A terrier goes ratting in a barn; a turncoat goes ratting by deserting a cause; an informer goes ratting to the police. In the US, a stylist may also be ratting hair, meaning backcombing it. Most of these uses are intransitive, so the surrounding words, not an object, tell them apart. The hair sense is the one that takes a direct object.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The occupation of controlling rats as pests, typically using a working terrier.

   For decades he made his living by ratting across the county's farms.

   Ratting kept the granaries free of vermin long before chemical pesticides.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The desertion of one's own principles.

   Years of ratting had left him without a single ally he trusted.

   Critics condemned the senator's ratting on the very reforms he had championed.

   Similarbetrayal, defection, apostasy

   Oppositeloyalty

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act of working as a strikebreaker, against trade union policy.

   Other dockworkers branded his ratting an unforgivable betrayal.

   Ratting during the dispute marked him as an enemy of the union for life.

   Similarstrikebreaking, blacklegging

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