Since you wanted to get technical with words:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rat2. informal a person who deserts his or her friends or associates, esp in time of trouble
3. informal a worker who works during a strike; blackleg; scab
4. slang chiefly ( US ) an informer; stool pigeon
5. informal a despicable person
6. smell a rat to detect something suspicious
And why did you leave out point one in your above Oxford quote? On rank 1,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rat:
1. brown rat See also black rat any of numerous long-tailed murine rodents, esp of the genus Rattus , that are similar to but larger than mice and are now distributed all over the world
If you search on
google,
bing or
yahoo for "rat", the first result (text and images) is the animal. Even in your quoted sources, the animal was ranked on first place.
how many people have been robbed (def. stolen by the use of coercion and violence) by a rodent?
I don't know any exact numbers, sry. But it's possible that a rat scratches your face, bites you in your hand and steals the cheese from your sandwich.
In your context it can only be intepreted as a human being
No, it's one way to interpret it but it's not the only one. It was a simple wordplay....not more, not less. If you don't like it, ok. Now let's get over it, life (literally) goes on. ;-)
there is a tor message board that is supposedly a hitman classifieds/work for hire sort of thing....most of the post are obvious jokes, but a few of the people on there claim to be serious.
^^^^^let's burn him for knowing such a shady place!!!!11 :o)