ratting
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.29 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The blood sport of setting a dog upon rats confined in a pit to see how many he will kill in a given time.
Archaic; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Don't go ratting to the police about what happened."
- "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."
- "Bear and bull baiting, dog fights, cockfighting, ratting, and other blood sports were attacked as un-Christian […]"
- "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."
- "Such men usually satisfied their needs for leisure in the patronage of saloons or in such “blood” sports as cockfights or rattings."
- "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 […]"