ratten

noun

1. (alt-of, alternative, rare)Alternative form of ratton.

verb

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

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

   “[…] 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?”