To ratchet or not to ratchet

September 9, 2021 5:45 AM

I read this piece on Slate about lawyers using the phrase 'ratchet' and its use as a slur (4th questions). I have a few queries.

I had never heard of the word ratchet in this context, but I am wondering now if I just am completely naive/dense. Me: English as first language, living in the UK but Australasian.

Firstly, where does the term come from in the US?
Someone I know is an American attorney and uses that word frequently - but in the sense of "the ratchet tightening" or "ratcheting towards a goal". It's a pretty uncommon word, so wondering if any other lawyers use it a lot or it means something legally? Or is this just coincidence?

Secondly, in my circles I have always heard people talking about getting ratfaced drunk or ratshit drunk. Or how are you feeling - yeah I'm ratshit today. What are the chances I have been mishearing the phrase the entire time? Or is this US specific?

posted by socky_puppy to Writing & Language (18 answers total)

Did you read the article linked in the answer? It seems clear to me that it is an AAVE term (so it's not surprising that you haven't come across it in the UK.) The sense of "ratchet" as in the mechanical device isn't related in any direct way. "Ratfaced" or "ratshit" likewise aren't related, except perhaps by coincidence - even if there's a connected etymology, the term as used in that question comes out of a totally different dialect.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:57 AM on September 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The word is pretty commonly used among millennials. Ratchet is a term that closely means "Ghetto". It has many of the same connotations.

Here is someone's master thesis on the history and origins of the word: Thesis

It's an incredibly good read. Page 43 of the thesis is a conclusion that summarizes things nicely.
posted by bbqturtle at 5:59 AM on September 9, 2021 [22 favorites]

I don't think it has anything to do with these people being lawyers, and more that the person who used the offending word is young. Here's rachet on urban dictionary. It's a slang word I only heard being used maybe 10 years ago? It's not one I'm really familiar with other than one from the ever expanding glossary of "things young people say," and not one I've ever heard used in real life, but I've seen/heard it occasionally on the internet in contexts that aren't relevant to my life so I don't pay attention to it.

I grew up in the deep south. Lots of colorful (racist) word choices down there, but this one wasn't in use while I was growing up, at least not where I was.
posted by phunniemee at 5:59 AM on September 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Wikipedia has a short article on the slang word "ratchet," a term which I (an American not of a culture that would use the term) have always just interpreted as a slang version of "wretched," though it seems to be more complicated than that. One of the citations is for a 2014 dictionary of slang that says it may be a variation of "ratshit."

The examples from your friend of "the ratchet tightening" and others is a very familiar usage to me and, as I would interpret it, based on the way that the tool often called a "ratchet" works, which is to incrementally apply torque by applying pressure, pausing and backing off, and then apply more pressure from where the user left off. I don't know if a socket wrench is only informally called a ratchet in the US, but it's a very common name for the tool in my experience, and very different from the slang use above.
posted by msbrauer at 6:00 AM on September 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

For those that are unfamiliar with this term, myself included. Ratchet as defined by Urban Dictionary.
posted by wile e at 6:00 AM on September 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

To me, a middle-aged white American, I perceive it as a very African-American term, maybe mostly Southern US? I think I probably know it from RuPaul's Drag Race and/or Black Twitter. I never heard it before 10 years ago or so. I understood it to mean "messy" or "trashy" (bbqturtle's "ghetto" definition also makes sense to me and has that race component that "messy" and "trashy" don't have). This usage of "ratchet" isn't something you would mistake for the verb "ratchet" or a socket wrench, or ratshit/ratfaced drunk, for that matter.
posted by mskyle at 6:06 AM on September 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

My white female friends (now mid 30s, then in 20s) used this term frequently in the early 2010s, but rarely hear it now.
posted by sandmanwv at 6:10 AM on September 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Best answer: "the ratchet tightening" or "ratcheting towards a goal"

This is a completely different usage. I agree with the gloss of 'ghetto' in terms of its connotation and why it can be offensive.

It's a little less obvious than 'ghetto' however and is a good example of an AAVE term that's being widely diffused on platforms like Insta and tiktok, where its young white users pick it up as an element of what is ultimately their consumer culture.

There's been renewed discourse about this, for example:

Racism on TikTok: The Appropriation of Black Culture in Digital Spaces [from a blog hosted at Wellesley College]
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:23 AM on September 9, 2021 [7 favorites]

Someone I know is an American attorney and uses that word frequently - but in the sense of "the ratchet tightening" or "ratcheting towards a goal". It's a pretty uncommon word, so wondering if any other lawyers use it a lot or it means something legally? Or is this just coincidence?

The informal derogatory slang meaning has been covered extensively, and I don't think it's related to the technical term at all.

A ratchet is a mechanical device that permits one direction of movement but not the other -- either in rotation or linearly. A cable tie or zip tie is maybe the most common ratchet in the world; you can pull them tighter, but not make them looser (except to cut them off entirely).

Many socket wrenches are ratcheting; this enables you to easily turn a bolt where you have a limited amount of room to work with; imagine something in a corner so you can only move the wrench 90 degrees. Without a ratchet, you put the wrench on the bolt, turn it 1/4 turn, then remove the wrench and put it back on the bolt (which is time consuming and clumsy). With a ratcheting wrench, you can keep the socket on the bolt. You turn the wrench 1/4 turn against the ratchet (driving the bolt in), then move the wrench backwards using the ratchet, turning freely and not moving the bolt. It's a lot faster and more convenient; ratcheting socket wrenches are often just called a ratchet.

And then as far as I understand, the word has semi-technical use in a legal context; a contract might involve a penalty that is $5000 for the first offense and then $5000 more each subsequent time (so $10K the second time, $15 the third, etc.) Or a deal might involve companies first sharing marketing information, then after passing a specific hurdle (say 2 years of time) sharing the marketing strategy, then after another hurdle sharing marketing budget, then after another hurdle merging their marketing departments.

These sort of clauses or deals that involve only one direction of "movement" -- especially with discrete gradual steps -- can be discussed using a ratchet as a metaphor. Something might be the "ratchet clause" that tightens over time or prevents backsliding somehow. Here's a discussion of ratchet clauses in commercial leases where the lease rate can go up if the prevailing market rate rises, but doesn't go back down again. This is not dissimilar from, say 'leverage' which is used in a legal/financial context where the metaphor of a different simple mechanical device is used -- one party can make a small move that has great force on the other. So it's not an official legal term of art as I understand it so much as a common metaphor that is broadly used in legal circles.
posted by Superilla at 8:50 AM on September 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

I grew up in the South; "ratchet" was not uncommon, but it wasn't white folks saying it, IIRC. The use of it now definitely is digital blackface if you're white. (Same if you call things "ghetto".)
posted by Kitteh at 8:59 AM on September 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Your attorney acquaintance might be referring to the ratchet effect, which is a concept that is used pretty extensively in economics/politics.
posted by kdar at 10:07 AM on September 9, 2021

I think we can give the senior attorneys involved in the story (the POC questioner and her ally friend) the benefit of the doubt in understanding the context in which it was used and not confusing a reference to a ratchet clause with describing something declasse. I'd rather not unpack the unpleasant implications of the alternative.

Also the Master's paper linked above does in fact trace the term to a mechanical ratchet, by way of 'ratched mouthed' on CB radio as an earlier 'motor mouthed' to mean an obnoxious chatterbox. Its euphony with 'wretched' may have assisted its salience in spreading but does not appear to be its origin.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:19 AM on September 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

So it's not an official legal term of art as I understand it so much as a common metaphor that is broadly used in legal circles.

I guess opinions could differ on whether it qualifies as a 'term of art,' but I think it's fair to say that it's a standard enough contractual term that people with some familiarity of the nuts and bolts of contract drafting would broadly understand what kind of language it refers to.

For the purposes of the OP, there's little risk of misusing it offensively if you have no exposure to the AAVE-derived usage. All of the technical meanings are innocuous.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:38 AM on September 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Speaking as a U.S. attorney, I can confirm that lawyers here use the non-AAVE noun ratchet all the time, in the sense of a mechanism of adjustment, like the "one-way ratchet" mentioned here or in contracts. The AAVE adjective ratchet that you are unfamiliar with has made its way into American slang. The noun is the mechanical mechanism and the adjective is the newer millenial slang, if that helps.

The ratshit drunk phrase you mention -- I've heard "batshit" used the same way and I don't think you've been hearing it wrong. Maybe ratchet and ratshit merged? Aren't words cool?
posted by *s at 3:17 PM on September 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm in the UK. This thread is literally the first time I've heard of the AAVE version of ratchet, but I'm very familiar with ratchet as a "one direction only" meaning, usually in political context (as in, govs are fond of ratcheting up restrictions that they say can go down again but never do, ICE being a great example) and mechanical (I have a ratcheting screwdriver, love it). I am maybe not a good example but I don't think of it as an uncommon word at all, or at least I'd expect most other adults to be familiar with it?

Being "ratfaced" when drunk and also in messy hangover is definitely a common UK expression going back many decades, you have not been mishearing. "Batshit" is more common than "ratshit" but I assume there is some overlap. I doubt it has anything at all to do with AAVE ratchet.
posted by Cheerwell Maker at 4:30 PM on September 9, 2021

Response by poster: Thanks all, this was very interesting, especially the thesis and the definitions. (I hadn't heard the acronym AAVE either, so learning a lot.)
posted by socky_puppy at 1:46 AM on September 10, 2021

If you're familiar with UK slang, then skanky has similar connotations to the way that ratchet is used in AAVE.
posted by automatronic at 2:06 AM on September 10, 2021

Just to muddle the waters, Johnny Too Bad has a ratchet in his waist -- presumably to club people with.
posted by CCBC at 11:35 PM on September 11, 2021