Rat
nounA long-tailed rodent larger than a mouse, often regarded as a pest.
How to spell rat
3 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce rat
What does rat mean?
- nounA long-tailed rodent larger than a mouse, often regarded as a pest.
- verbTo betray or inform on someone, especially to an authority.
Rat in a sentence
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noun
The council set traps after a rat was seen near the bins.
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verb
He refused to rat on his colleagues during the inquiry.
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noun
A pet rat can be surprisingly clean and affectionate.
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verb
Nobody on the team would rat to the manager about the missing cash.
Where does rat come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a very old native word, recorded in Old English as ræt, the name for the familiar long-tailed rodent. It has close relatives across the Germanic languages, such as Dutch rat and German Ratte, and similar forms turn up in the Romance languages too, which has led scholars to debate whether the word spread from one source or arose independently. The black rat and later the brown rat were notorious carriers of disease, so the animal's bad reputation soon coloured the language. By the early 1600s 'rat' was being used figuratively for a treacherous or disloyal person, and the verb 'to rat', meaning to desert a cause or to inform on an associate, grew out of that sense. The spelling has stayed blunt and simple for over a thousand years, which is exactly why almost nobody gets it wrong.
How the word is built
- rat (single root; from Old English ræt, a rodent)
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