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Examples
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“Anyone can rat,” he quipped, “but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
BARGAINING WITH THE DEVIL ROBERT MNOOKIN 2010
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“Anyone can rat,” he quipped, “but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
BARGAINING WITH THE DEVIL ROBERT MNOOKIN 2010
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“Anyone can rat,” he quipped, “but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
BARGAINING WITH THE DEVIL ROBERT MNOOKIN 2010
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“Anyone can rat,” he quipped, “but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
BARGAINING WITH THE DEVIL ROBERT MNOOKIN 2010
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He changed parties not once but twice, noting that anyone could rat, but it took real character to "re-rat," and while he hated communism, he spent long nights with Stalin, convinced that he could, with world enough and time, bring the dictator around.
The Editor’s Desk 2008
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Are you not making an assumption here that Lisbon Treaty Constitution issue is ALL that is tempting Shirley Williams to re-rat?
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"Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat."
You're conservative because you're such an unsavory person quite aside from your politics, right? Ann Althouse 2007
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He said, ` Anyone can rat, but it takes talent to re-rat. '
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QUOTATION: Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
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This reminds me of Randolph Churchill on Lord Derby, "A man may rat once, but not rat and re-rat."
The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 1 Stephen Lucius Gwynn 1907
qroqqa commented on the word re-rat
This word is usually associated with Winston Churchill's defection back to the Conservative Party in 1925, and his famous comment . . . I can't find an authoritative written source for it, but the most favoured form across the Web is 'Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.'
He might well have been conscious of his father Lord Randolph Churchill's comment on an earlier prime minister, Lord Derby: 'A man may rat once, but not rat and re-rat.'
However, the OED has an even earlier use: Mary Frampton (1773-1846) writes about Talleyrand in her journal (published 1885): if he has 'refused to re-rat'.
August 14, 2008