ratchet
n.— «As another employee approached with the bat, the man left and said, “I’ll be back before you close and next time I’m coming through with the ratchet,” which the employees understood as slang for a handgun, according to the report.» —“Merchant’s bat talks: Outta here, shoplifter!” by Paul Koepp Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey) Nov. 29, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...
When Bebe, a non-native English speaker in Charlotte, North Carolina, moved from England to the United States, she learned that a minor illness isn’t called the lurgy but the crud. In the 1700s, lurgy was used jokingly to refer to “a vague medical...