ratchet
adjective
| RATCH-ut
Trashy and disorderly, sometimes in a good way
What does ratchet mean?
Ratchet is a slang term that means “low-class” or “out of control.” Depending on context, the word can be used in a disparaging or complimentary way.
Examples of ratchet
I’m no longer into the hood girl era. I want genuine friends who like brunch, fun museums, just classy things. Everything don’t have to be ratchet.
—@synmulaa, Threads, 2 Jul. 2024
We’re working, saving, going to the gym, and having cocktails at nice restaurants, maybe go to a club and be a little ratchet.
—Drake’s stuff is kind of mid-tempo, so I don’t workout to it too often, but he has a couple songs that I listen to that keep me distracted. Future—that’s when it gets ratchet. He really gets me in the zone.
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Where does ratchet come from?
Early evidence for ratchet points to its use in the 1990s by Black hip-hop artists. The term appears as early as 1992 in a song by a hip-hop group named UGK from Port Arthur, Texas. Their lyrics use ratchet to denigrate a sexually promiscuous woman as trashy. Later influential examples of the word come in the late 1990s and early 2000s from Lava House, a record label founded by Anthony Mandigo in Shreveport, Louisiana. Lava House released music prominently featuring the word ratchet and created an energetic, carefree dance and style of hip-hop referred to as ratchet. Like UGK, his use of the word puts down women as low-class, but it also was used for “wild” or “out of control”—and still is, especially for lively hip-hop music or an unrestrained experience of it.
The precise origins of ratchet are unclear. It may be a Southern and African American English regional pronunciation of wretched. It may be metaphorically connected to the tool ratchet and its related verb, to ratchet up, “to increase” or “intensify.” Ratchet spread in the late 2000s and early 2010s, breaking into the mainstream in 2012 when it was popularized by such hip-hop superstars as Nicki Minaj and LL Cool J. Megan Thee Stallion notably reclaimed ratchet as a term for a kind of self-empowered assertiveness in her 2020 megahit song “Savage”: “I'm a savage / Classy, bougie, ratchet / Sassy, moody, nasty.”
How is ratchet used?
Ratchet is a Black slang term used in and associated with popular Black culture in complex, sensitive, often disparaging ways, especially in reference to Black women.
Speaker and context are essential to the meaning and connotation of this word, and it’s used very similarly to slang terms like ghetto and hood. As such, ratchet is often used to criticize behaviors and appearances stereotypically associated with lower class Black people, especially women. In this use it can be sexist, racist, and classist. However, many Black women and LGBTQ+ people have reappropriated the term in more positive or humorous ways, using it, for example, in reference to looking a bit sleazy, letting loose a little, and “turning it up” from time to time.
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