What is "ratcheting"

Usage examples of "ratcheting".

The intervals between the sharp sounds grew shorter until she was beating a frantic tattoo, a flurry of ratcheting clacks that signaled high drama just ahead.

The plasticuffs came on and I heard the ratcheting and felt the pressure as they were tightened.

The door swinging open, the ironing board falling down to the horizontal with a ratcheting sound, reminding him somehow of a guillotine, his wife crammed into the space beneath and in her mouth a rag that had been used to polish the furniture.

He had used desktop electric calculators before, bulky machines half as big as a typewriter, was used to the whirr of their motors, the ratcheting thunk of turning gears and cams, the wait for everything to finish in a multidigit multiplication.

Given what was happening in the Balkans, and the Falklands, and the recent ratcheting up of tension in Kashmir, and Chinese saber rattling in support of Pakistan, and the renewed spread of nuclear weapons, the US had no option but to make certain of the effectiveness of its own nuclear force.

The White Flame flicked a bony hand, and a bodyguard raised a curled ram's horn and blew a ratcheting wail that brought outwalkers closer lest they be separated in a sandstorm.

These sounds, hard as ratcheting gears, turned her, turned her, as did the whirlwind stirred by the ghostly wings, a turbulence that tossed her hair and buffeted her face, until she rotated again to the sight of the votive candles and to the penitent on the pew.