rattle

English

Etymology

(onomatopoeia). Toy named after sound.

Pronunciation

Noun

rattle (plural rattles)

  1. (onomatopoeia) a sound made by loose objects shaking or vibrating against one another.
    I wish they would fix the rattle under my dashboard.
    • Prior
      The rattle of a drum.
  2. A baby's toy designed to make sound when shaken, usually containing loose grains or pellets in a hollow container.
    • Alexander Pope
      Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
  3. A musical instrument that makes a rattling sound.
    • Sir Walter Raleigh
      The rattles of Isis and the cymbals of Brasilea nearly enough resemble each other.
  4. (dated) Noisy, rapid talk.
    • Hakewill
      All this ado about the golden age is but an empty rattle and frivolous conceit.
  5. (dated) A noisy, senseless talker; a jabberer.
    • Macaulay
      It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle.
  6. A scolding; a sharp rebuke.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Heylin to this entry?)
  7. (zoology) Any organ of an animal having a structure adapted to produce a rattling sound.
    The rattle of the rattlesnake is composed of the hardened terminal scales, loosened in succession, but not cast off, and modified in form so as to make a series of loose, hollow joints.
  8. The noise in the throat produced by the air in passing through mucus which the lungs are unable to expel; death rattle.

Derived terms

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Translations

a sound made by loose objects shaking or vibrating against one another
a baby's toy

Verb

rattle (third-person singular simple present rattles, present participle rattling, simple past and past participle rattled)

  1. (transitive) (ergative) To create a sound by shaking.
    Rattle the can of cat treats if you need to find Fluffy.
  2. (transitive) To scare, startle, unsettle, or unnerve.
    The accident really rattled him.
  3. (transitive) To cause something to make a rattling sound by hitting it.
    • 2011 February 5, Michael Kevin Darling, “Tottenham 2 - 1 Bolton”, BBC:
      It was a deflating end to the drama for the hosts and they appeared ruffled, with Bolton going close to a leveller when Johan Elmander rattled the bar with a header from Matt Taylor's cross.
  4. (intransitive) To make a rattling noise; to make noise by or from shaking.
    I wish the dashboard in my car would quit rattling.

Translations

to create a sound by shaking
to scare, startle, unsettle, or unnerve
to make a rattling noise
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

Derived terms

Terms derived from the noun or verb "rattle"

See also

Anagrams

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Last modified on 18 May 2013, at 11:40