Word.ws English Dictionary

jump the rattler

jump the rattler verb: to travel on a train without paying the fare.

Verb

jump the rattler (third-person singular simple present jumps the rattler, present participle jumping the rattler, simple past and past participle jumped the rattler)

  1. (Australia, slang) To travel on a train without paying the fare.
    • Four times he jumped the rattler, his knuckles bleeding from punching walls.1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 269

Forms of jump the rattler

third-person singular presentjumps the rattler
present participlejumping the rattler
past participlejumped the rattler
pastjumped the rattler
alternative formjump a rattler

Questions about jump the rattler

What does jump the rattler mean?
Jump the rattler means to travel on a train without paying the fare.
What part of speech is jump the rattler?
Jump the rattler is a verb.
What is the past tense of jump the rattler?
The past tense of jump the rattler is jumped the rattler.

Words near jump the rattler in the dictionary

  1. jump the dock
  2. jump the gun
  3. jump the lights
  4. jump the line
  5. jump the queue
  6. jump the rattler
  7. jump the reservation
  8. jump the shark
  9. jump through hoops
  10. jump to
  11. jump to conclusions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jump the rattler (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-jump the rattler.ogg.

Cite this entry: “jump the rattler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jump_the_rattler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.