What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Do you know what the slang adjective “ratchet” means? (1 Viewer)

Do you know what the slang adjective “ratchet” means?

  • Yes, been knowing it for a while

    Votes: 51 45.5%
  • Yes, learned it recently

    Votes: 2 1.8%
  • Heard it before, but unclear on exact meaning

    Votes: 10 8.9%
  • Have no idea/never run across the term

    Votes: 49 43.8%

  • Total voters
    112
  • Poll closed .

Doug B

Footballguy
Just ran across the adjective “ratchet” for the first time watching TV tonight. I asked my daughter what it meant, and she looked at me like I didn’t know what “blue” or “tall” meant :shrug:

This word can’t be common knowledge for late middle-agers, can it?

 
Just ran across the adjective “ratchet” for the first time watching TV tonight. I asked my daughter what it meant, and she looked at me like I didn’t know what “blue” or “tall” meant :shrug:

This word can’t be common knowledge for late middle-agers, can it?
No. 

Hood slang that made it to mainstream. Ten years old maybe?

Closest term you know would be "skanky".

 
Just ran across the adjective “ratchet” for the first time watching TV tonight. I asked my daughter what it meant, and she looked at me like I didn’t know what “blue” or “tall” meant :shrug:

This word can’t be common knowledge for late middle-agers, can it?
I only barely know it because I'm just boughetto enough.

I can never tell whether it's "ratchet" or "ratched," though, when pronounced. Is it like the socket or is it like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? Inquiring minds want to know.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Anyone care to throw out anymore underground words that might bubble up into the mainstream sometime soon?

 
I need to get with the times.  What hip hop album after 2002 can expand my vocabulary in time for the March Madness party at the casino Friday?

 
I need to get with the times.  What hip hop album after 2002 can expand my vocabulary in time for the March Madness party at the casino Friday?
You mean there were hip hop albums after 2002?

Refer to everything north as "norf." Just whenever somebody makes a bucket just scream out "Norf side Long Beach." And whenever someone is taking over a game make sure to say that he "eats."

"Man, before you go looking south for competition, try norf with me. That's where I eat."

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Valuable info when I watch the Colgate game, thanks.
I have no idea how to respond to that. You know I went there, or no? That's funny.

We breed them differently up there. Can't believe they hit the tourney again. Probably the first time in a looooooong time.

 
I have no idea how to respond to that. You know I went there, or no? That's funny.

We breed them differently up there. Can't believe they hit the tourney again. Probably the first time in a looooooong time.
Haha no I didn't.  Very interested in a game with a total of 162 though, could be 100-90.  

 
Haha no I didn't.  Very interested in a game with a total of 162 though, could be 100-90.  
I honestly haven't followed college basketball since the year that UConn won with Kevin Ollie. The year with Shabazz Napier. I could tell you nothing about the over-under except to tell you that they kept pace with Army, which inflated their NET rankings. (Don't ask me what those are, either.) I do know Ken Pom, though, and he's got them ranked in the eighties, according to the WSJ. That's about the extent of it.

Go Raiders!

 
Are you familiar with the term "Drip?" That would essentially be what you've only recently started referring to as your Swag. 
Never heard “Drip” and not 100% clear on “Swag”. What might have Run DMC called “swag”? Confidence? Game? Stroke? “Swag” being related to “swagger”?

 
 Learned about it years ago, was always funny talking to kids in high school and explaining to them what formaldehyde is actually used for. Was originally known as "wet".  Don't know how accurate any of that is, but that was the cycle i saw with it, and learned across the city of Philadelphia between high school kids. Was something most didn't care about because they thought it was just another way to call Weed, but finding it dipped into formaldehyde helped to slow the popularity

ETA:  was waay off. Getting old and tying to remain hip is a bad combo. kept the part about "wet" for the heck of it

 
Last edited by a moderator:
That term has been around for a long time though so i just find it surprising. 
"New cultural stuff" stopped for me in the mid-1990s. I have absorbed some from my wife and kids and my nephews.

"Being around for a long time", to me, means "pushing forty years". Nothing from the 2000s -- that is, the year two-zero-zero-zero forward to today -- has been around a long time. Heck, grunge music still feels new to me.

 
I just learned who Dua Lipa was so I can relate.
Even after checking in and out of the Grammys last night ... I still don't know. Wasn't Dua Lipa nominated for Best New Artist? Or something?

Gotta say ... the Grammys are a good place to catch up on stuff. That was where I first learned that Donald Glover and Childish Gambino were the same person a few years ago.

 
Even after checking in and out of the Grammys last night ... I still don't know. Wasn't Dua Lipa nominated for Best New Artist? Or something?

Gotta say ... the Grammys are a good place to catch up on stuff. That was where I first learned that Donald Glover and Childish Gambino were the same person a few years ago.
I remember being late to this party too. 

 
Even after checking in and out of the Grammys last night ... I still don't know. Wasn't Dua Lipa nominated for Best New Artist? Or something?

Gotta say ... the Grammys are a good place to catch up on stuff. That was where I first learned that Donald Glover and Childish Gambino were the same person a few years ago.
Is this like Shock G & Humpty?

 
yeah, seems like you're either really really white and/or been living under a rock
Same thing I told parasaurolophus upthread: I have almost no exposure to contemporary music or the culture surrounding it   Where else would I have run across it? My clubbing days are long, long over. What's left?

 
Same thing I told parasaurolophus upthread: I have almost no exposure to contemporary music or the culture surrounding it   Where else would I have run across it? My clubbing days are long, long over. What's left?
tv? the internets? pop culture in general

 
Never heard “Drip” and not 100% clear on “Swag”. What might have Run DMC called “swag”? Confidence? Game? Stroke? “Swag” being related to “swagger”?
Drip is jewelry, mostly. Like gold or diamonds dripping off your ears, neck, wrist etc. Could also refer to expensive tech in some contexts like if you just got new headphones 

 
tv? the internets? pop culture in general
Which TV programs? The stuff we watch in the house never really touches on hip-hop culture.

The internet ... I'm not on any social media. Really, just three message boards that I've belonged to for about 20 years each (this one being the 'youngest' at 19 years or so). No Facebook, Twitter (except when others link to it), Instagram, Snapchat, no dating apps, etc.

Pop culture in general, eh? Yeah ... just as soon call it "living under a rock" :D  

 
Never heard “Drip” and not 100% clear on “Swag”. What might have Run DMC called “swag”? Confidence? Game? Stroke? “Swag” being related to “swagger”?
Drip is jewelry, mostly. Like gold or diamonds dripping off your ears, neck, wrist etc. Could also refer to expensive tech in some contexts like if you just got new headphones 
Ah. So when "drip" was compared to the term "swag" upthread ... "swag" means something outside of hip-hop contexts. Generally, it means "cool stuff, especially cool stuff you get when being part of something -- a seminar, membership to a club, etc."

 
Which TV programs? The stuff we watch in the house never really touches on hip-hop culture.

The internet ... I'm not on any social media. Really, just three message boards that I've belonged to for about 20 years each (this one being the 'youngest' at 19 years or so). No Facebook, Twitter (except when others link to it), Instagram, Snapchat, no dating apps, etc.

Pop culture in general, eh? Yeah ... just as soon call it "living under a rock" :D  
This isn't the 80s/90s. Hip Hop has taken over pop music and essentially the same thing.    

Seems like you've answered your own question as to your lack of vocabulary.  I say stay true to yourself and as long as you're happy, keep riding that out of touch, old white guy schtick.  It'll continually make for a good laugh amongst your kids and you can embarrass the hell out of them with ease 👍

 
Which TV programs? The stuff we watch in the house never really touches on hip-hop culture.

The internet ... I'm not on any social media. Really, just three message boards that I've belonged to for about 20 years each (this one being the 'youngest' at 19 years or so). No Facebook, Twitter (except when others link to it), Instagram, Snapchat, no dating apps, etc.

Pop culture in general, eh? Yeah ... just as soon call it "living under a rock" :D  
When you see some little train wreck at Wal-Mart, hair all banged up, teeth a mess, clothes don't fit right, but she thinks she looks good? That's ratchet. 

 
This isn't the 80s/90s. Hip Hop has taken over pop music and essentially the same thing.    
This I know. It's fair to say that I'm not much exposed to contemporary pop music at all. Just get some drips and drabs from the kids (and yet my daughter is into a bunch of 70s & 80s music). My personal listening choices are all throwback.

Usually when a recent pop song gets on my radar, it's been out a year or two already. Every so often I catch a song somewhere (usually at the grocery or in a retail outlet), and say to myself "I've heard that a few times recently ... let me see if I can catch a lyric and Google a title for it". Practically every time, it's something that came out the previous year or a even earlier.

 
Getting old and tying to remain hip is a bad combo.
No doubt about it.

I don't mind not knowing the bleeding-edge stuff or the totally-underground stuff. But when a Grammys host drops a word into his patter as if its just known to everyone ... I wanna catch up in the moment, just so I can understand the gist of what was just said. I don't like that feeling of being left behind like that (though I understand academically why it happens and that it's inevitable).

 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top