ratten

plural rattens

1. alternativerareAlternative form of ratton.

present singular third person rattens · participle present rattening · participle past rattened · past rattened

1. Northern EnglandobsoleteTo sabotage machinery or tools as part of an industrial dispute, particularly the tools of a workman who went against the union.

   Did you also employ them to ratten people if they had broken any rules of your society, for instance, by having too many apprentices?

   1867, Report Presented to the Trades Unions Commissioners by the Examiners Appointed to Inquire Into Acts of Intimidation, Outrage, Or Wrong Alleged to Have Been Promoted, Encouraged, Or Connived at by Trades Unions in the Town of Sheffield, Great Britain. Royal Commission on Trades Unions. G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, 1867. p. 225

   1 more example

   […] derived from the sabot or shoe beneath railway lines. The saboteur was thus a remover of metal shoes, a train-wrecker. I must leave it at that. Meanwhile why not restore ratten to its old place in the Trade Union vocabulary, that is if, in these times of scant, we must endure any such wanton hindrance of the works?

   1947, Ivor John Carnegie Brown, Say The Word, page 100