ratten

The verbal sense is from the notion of causing mischief like a rat.

ratten (plural rattens)

1. (rare) Alternative form of ratton

ratten (third-person singular simple present rattens, present participle rattening, simple past and past participle rattened)

1. (obsolete, Northern England) To sabotage machinery or tools as part of an industrial dispute, particularly the tools of a workman who went against the union.
   • 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:

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

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

     […] 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?

• Arnett, attern, natter, net art, tarten, treant

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• Rhymes: -ɑtən

ratten

1. plural of rat

• natter, tarten

ratten

1. to tear apart
   • 1402, The Reply of Friar Daw Topias:

     renden and ratyn

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• “ratten, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

ratten

1. definite singular of ratt

• tanter, tentar