noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A saw that is designed to cut wood along its grain, i.e. to rip, to execute a rip cut. countable, uncountable

   "A ripsaw will slice smoothly along the grain, but chew up the wood if it goes against the grain."

2. 2
   a handsaw for cutting with the grain of the wood wordnet
3. 3
   A genre of music played with a ripsaw and other instruments, originally associated mainly with Turks and Caicos Islands. Caribbean, uncountable

Verb

1. 1
   To cut with a ripsaw.

Synonyms

All synonyms

rake and scraperake and scrapesawsplitsaw

Antonyms

All antonyms

crosscut saw

Example

More examples

"A ripsaw will slice smoothly along the grain, but chew up the wood if it goes against the grain."

Etymology

From rip + saw.

Related phrases

turks and caicos islands

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.