ratchet down

1. 1.

   move by degrees in one direction only

   “a ratcheting lopping tool”

   Synonymsratchetrachet up

   Broaderadvance

Questions about ratchet down

What does ratchet down mean?

ratchet down means "move by degrees in one direction only".

What is another word for ratchet down?

Close synonyms include ratchet, rachet up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ratchet down a common word?

ratchet down is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.