This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. Learn more

Another word for ratchet

a-z
Noun
      1. A wheel with a rim notched into teeth, which mesh with those of another wheel or of a rack to transmit or receive motion
      2. One of a set of cogged wheels within a mechanism.
      3. (When used attributively) Something behaving in similar, jerky, manner as a cogwheel, e.g. cogwheel respiration as a side effect of hyperbaric medicine
      1. A wheel rimmed with toothlike projections, used to engage the links of a chain in a pulley or drive system.
      1. Any of a number of teeth or points, as on the rim of a wheel, arranged to fit into the links of a chain
      2. A cylinder with a toothed rim that engages in the perforations of photographic or movie film to pull it through a camera or projector.
      3. A wheel fitted with sprockets on its outer rim, used in a chain drive
      1. A tricky or previously unsuspected condition or drawback:
      2. A device for fastening something or for checking motion:
      3. A tricky or disadvantageous condition; a catch:
    See also:

    wheel

    cog

© WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD® ROGET’S A-Z THESAURUS by Charlton Laird and the editors of Webster’s New World dictionaries. Copyright © 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Sentence Examples

  • He wanted her to fight him, to ratchet up the levels of agony.

  • The ratchet communicates with a train of wheels which work the dial-hands.

  • The ratchet wheel is acted upon by a pawl which is shown on the diagram.

  • When the load to be weighed comes upon the platform, the end of the steelyard rises and unlocks the ratchet wheel through the pawl; the sprocket gearing is driven by the friction clutch, and drives the axle of the left-hand small pulley.

  • The brushes are carried by sleeves which run loosely on the shaft, and to each sleeve is rigidly fixed a ratchet wheel.

More sentences →

Words that mention ratchet in the Dictionary

Words near ratchet in the Thesaurus