Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or characteristic of rats.
- adj. Infested with rats.
- adj. Dilapidated; shabby.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Looking like a rat; smelling like a rat; hence, dirty.
- Miserable; wretched; poor.
- Full of rats: as, a ratty cellar.
Wiktionary
- adj. Similar to a rat; ratlike.
- adj. Infested with rats.
- adj. colloquial In poor condition or repair; worn out; battered; tattered; torn.
- adj. UK, colloquial Irritable, annoyed.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. dirty and infested with rats
- adj. showing signs of wear and tear
- adj. of or characteristic of rats
Etymologies
- From rat + -y. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Cages holding lumps in ratty jackets lined the opposite wall.”
365 tomorrows » 2009 » October : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“He was dressed in ratty jeans and an old green field jacket.”
“Used and ratty is fine as I am not going to use it for pasta.”
“But if you are in ratty jeans, and your hair is a mess, you might take it as an insult.”
“Madhani had traveled extensively through the dangers of Iraq — unarmed, unguarded, in ratty old cars — and he knew that many apparently random attacks had hidden histories behind them.”
“He admits it looks "ratty" - but that has only happened because he has always been so proud of it, and what it represents, that he has worn it into the ground.”
“That means that a lot of nerds are struggling for their next paycheck, living in ratty apartments and working in crappy jobs, and they don’t even realize that the reason they’re poor is because people find them offputting.”
Overcoming Your Nerd-Dom: Part 1 In A Possibly-Continuing Series
“Could you elaborate on the data processing aspects of the investigation analysis such as the geographic information system analysis of the debris and drilling down into the so called ratty data, and if you're going to build a database to help you analyze the evidence you're collecting?”
“The furniture could only described as ratty and unsuitable for anyone's home.”
“Girls want to pay for that, so I'm okay with keeping my nasty kind of ratty hair.”
The Washington Post: Super Bowl Media Day live: Green Bay Packers' A.J. Hawk on hair
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ratty’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
Words For Novel (Part 2)
fable, sprite, syphilitic, anvil, wonderstruck, vertigo, bridled, tufted, fettered, savvy, tweed fedora, tryst and 255 more...
-
Y
What a -Y does to an otherwise common, dull word
zany, waxy, wavy, arty, chewy, bony, boxy, cozy, nosy, foxy, wiry, junky and 321 more...
-
Words of Wear
Words describing worn out objects
worn, tattered, threads, ratty, dirty, old, smudgy, hand me down, stained, threadbare, decrepit, shoddy and 21 more...
-
Animal Magnetism
Adjectives derived from animal names but used to describe people
dogged, foxy, bearish, bullish, pigheaded, birdbrained, catty, wolfish, bullheaded, horsy, weaselly, squirrelly and 39 more...
-
Fox, Jeffrey. How To Make Big Money I...
Interesting words from this book.
hardscrabble, staph, glancing, bellowed, chock-full, gird, unsheathe, sally, snub, flophouses, vagrants, demerits and 63 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ratty.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.