Rattle

How to spell rattle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rattle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rattle mean?

1. verbTo make or cause a rapid series of short, sharp knocking or clattering sounds.
2. nounA baby's toy or device that makes a clattering noise when shaken, or the clattering sound itself.

Rattle in a sentence

• verb

  The loose window pane began to rattle in the wind.

• noun

  The baby shook the bright plastic rattle until it laughed.

• verb

  Strong gusts can rattle the old garage door all night.

• noun

  A faint rattle from under the bonnet warned the driver of a loose part.

Where does rattle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Rattle is an imitative word, meaning it was coined to echo the very noise it describes: a fast series of short, sharp knocking sounds. It appears in Middle English as ratelen, and most scholars treat it as a native formation, though it has close cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch ratelen and the German rasseln, both of which also mean to make a clattering sound. The little -le ending is a frequentative suffix, the same one that turns a single act into a repeated, rapid one in words such as sparkle, crackle, and jingle, which suits a sound that comes in a rapid string rather than a single beat. By the late Middle Ages it had settled into both a verb for making the noise and a noun for the noise itself, and from there into the name of the baby's toy that produces it. The informal sense of rattling someone, meaning to fluster or unsettle them, grew up much later from the idea of shaking a person until their composure clatters loose.

How the word is built

• rattle (imitative root mimicking the sound)
• -le (frequentative suffix denoting repeated action)