Ask McFartnuggets: “Where Did The Slang Word ‘Ratchet’ Come From?”

Dear McFartnuggets: 

Okay so I know that the term “ratchet” means “ghetto” or “skanky” now I’m just trying to figure out where the term came from? How did this term come about? Who made it up? What are the origins of “ratchet”? -- Eloise from Lincoln, Nebraska

Dear Eloise:

There are a lot of conflicting explanations of where the word “ratchet” came from. It’s almost impossible to precisely pinpoint the exact origin. If I had to take a guess I would say it’s derived from the definition of “ratchet” as used by American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller in his 1964 paper “The relation of recombination to mutational advance.” Muller described this “ratchet” as the process by which the genomes of an asexual population accumulate deleterious mutations in an irreversible manner. Basically it was a way to explain the evolution of sex and why sexual reproduction was more successful than asexual reproduction. Muller’s ratchet used the idea of the metaphorical “ratchet effect” which is meant to describe the phenomena of people’s inability to reverse their behaviors after a specific event has occurred. It was called the “ratchet effect" because a mechanical ratchet holds a spring as it winds it up, not allowing the spring to slip back to its original position. Now how does this relate back to a hoodrat strutting around like a ho that she think she cute? Well, Muller’s ratchet highlighted some negative effects of asexual reproduction in recombination processes. Clearly a skank whore is promoting sexual reproduction and it’s the ratchet of society that keeps her from rolling back her behaviors to something less trashy and “ghetto.” Anyway that’s my theory.

When someone calls you a "basic ratchet ass ho" this is what they're referring to.

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