🐀 A rat hunter 🧥 Hunting clothes

ratcatcher

9.6

Clothes worn for fox hunting, usually a tweed jacket and boots

noun
/ˈrætˌkætʃər/

Jargon

: chaqueta de caza

He arrived at the meet wearing a traditional ratcatcher, complete with tweed jacket and leather boots.

Examples

The club requires all new members to wear a ratcatcher for their first hunt.
He wore a classic ratcatcher during the hunt.
She admired the classic look of his ratcatcher as he prepared for the beagling event.
The ratcatcher style is quite popular among hunters.
He arrived at the meet wearing a traditional ratcatcher, complete with tweed jacket and leather boots.
The club requires all new members to wear a ratcatcher for their first hunt.
She admired the classic look of his ratcatcher as he prepared for the beagling event.

How Suitable

ratcatcher

Jargon

9.6

casual

81 1.3

civvies

Slang

9.2

formalwear

3 3.6

Surface Forms

ratcatcher singular

ratcatchers plural

Morphology

ratcatcher = rat + catcher (opaque) = rat + catch + er

The clothing sense is a sense extension from the occupational meaning and cannot be derived by normal compositional rules from 'rat' + 'catcher'.

Etymology

Ratcatcher for hunting clothes is a name with a simple picture behind it: a helpful way to remember it is to think of the plain tweed jacket and boots a town ratcatcher might wear while working. That's why ratcatcher now means the informal jacket and trousers people wear for fox-hunting or beagling.