Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rattle   /rˈætəl/   Listen
noun
Rattle  n.  
1.
A rapid succession of sharp, clattering sounds; as, the rattle of a drum.
2.
Noisy, rapid talk. "All this ado about the golden age is but an empty rattle and frivolous conceit."
3.
An instrument with which a rattling sound is made; especially, a child's toy that rattles when shaken. "The rattles of Isis and the cymbals of Brasilea nearly enough resemble each other." "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw."
4.
A noisy, senseless talker; a jabberer. "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."
5.
A scolding; a sharp rebuke. (Obs.)
6.
(Zool.) Any organ of an animal having a structure adapted to produce a rattling sound. Note: The rattle of a rattlesnake is composed of the hardened terminal scales, loosened in succession, but not cast off, and so modified in form as to make a series of loose, hollow joints.
7.
The noise in the throat produced by the air in passing through mucus which the lungs are unable to expel; chiefly observable at the approach of death, when it is called the death rattle. See Rale.
To spring a rattle, to cause it to sound.
Yellow rattle (Bot.), a yellow-flowered herb (Rhinanthus Crista-galli), the ripe seeds of which rattle in the inflated calyx.


verb
Rattle  v. t.  
1.
To cause to make a rattling or clattering sound; as, to rattle a chain.
2.
To assail, annoy, or stun with a rattling noise. "Sound but another (drum), and another shall As loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear."
3.
Hence, to disconcert; to confuse; as, to rattle one's judgment; to rattle a player in a game. (Colloq.)
4.
To scold; to rail at.
To rattle off.
(a)
To tell glibly or noisily; as, to rattle off a story.
(b)
To rail at; to scold. "She would sometimes rattle off her servants sharply."


Rattle  v. i.  (past & past part. rattled; pres. part. rattling)  
1.
To make a quick succession of sharp, inharmonious noises, as by the collision of hard and not very sonorous bodies shaken together; to clatter. "And the rude hail in rattling tempest forms." "'T was but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street."
2.
To drive or ride briskly, so as to make a clattering; as, we rattled along for a couple of miles. (Colloq.)
3.
To make a clatter with the voice; to talk rapidly and idly; to clatter; with on or away; as, she rattled on for an hour. (Colloq.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |




"Rattle" Quotes from Famous Books



... collar, and it choked him like a boaconstrictor. But not Sebastian Dolores alone did that. When things begin to go wrong in the life of a man whose hands have held too many things, the disorder flutters through all the radii of his affairs, and presently they rattle away from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... indeed! I knew how it would be yesterday, and how you would be worse and not better. You are not fit to go out, dear dearest, to sit in the glare of lights and talk and listen, and have the knives and forks to rattle all the while and remind you of the chains of necessity. Oh—should I bear it, do you think? I was thinking, when you went away—after you had quite gone. You would laugh to see me at my dinner—Flush and me—Flush placing in me such ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... contains possibilities of pleasurable sensations which may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within himself. Other regions of the body ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... raised quarter-deck at the stern held more soldiers, the sunlight flashing merrily upon their armor and their gun-barrels; as they neared, the English could hear plainly the cracks of the whips, and the yells as of wild beasts which answered them; the roll and rattle of the oars, and the loud "Ha!" of the slaves which accompanied every stroke, and the oaths and curses of the drivers; while a sickening musky smell, as of a pack of kenneled hounds, came down the wind from off those dens of misery. No wonder if many a young heart shuddered ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... such an insult having been offered. On the whole, the evidence is decidedly in favour of the reality of the incident; whilst Henry's reported answer is very characteristic: "I will thank the Dauphin in person, and will (p. 110) carry him such tennis-balls as shall rattle his hall's roof about his ears." And they, says the contemporary chronicler,[85] were great gunstones for the Dauphin ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com