Word.ws English Dictionary

rackle

/ˈɹæ.kəl/

rackle noun: a chain.

Noun

rackle (countable and uncountable, plural rackles)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, countable, dialectal) A chain.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal, uncountable) Noisy talk.

Verb

rackle (third-person singular simple present rackles, present participle rackling, simple past and past participle rackled)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) To talk noisily; rattle on.

Adjective

rackle (comparative more rackle, superlative most rackle)

  1. Of a person: rash, impetuous, reckless
  2. Rough, crude
  3. Sturdy in old age

Forms of rackle

Noun
pluralrackles
alternative formrakkill
Verb
third-person singular presentrackles
present participlerackling
past participlerackled
pastrackled
Adjective
comparativemore rackle
superlativemost rackle

Origin of rackle

From Middle English rakyl (“chain”), apparently related to Old Frisian rakels (“chain”), French racle ("the iron ring of a door" (from a Germanic source)), and also Middle English rakente, from Old English racente (“chain, fetter”). More at rackan.

Uncertain. Probably from rack (“to drive; move; go forward rapidly”), alteration of Middle English reken (“to drive; move; tend”), from Old Norse reka, vreka (“to drive; drift; toss”) + -le (“tending or prone to”). Related to Icelandic reka, Swedish vräka, Danish vrage, English wrack.

Questions about rackle

What does rackle mean?
Rackle means a chain.
What part of speech is rackle?
Rackle can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce rackle?
Rackle is pronounced /ˈɹæ.kəl/.
What is the plural of rackle?
The plural of rackle is rackles.

Words near rackle in the dictionary

  1. racking one's brain
  2. racking one's brains
  3. racking up
  4. rackingly
  5. rackings
  6. rackle
  7. rackled
  8. rackles
  9. rackless
  10. Rackley
  11. Rackleys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rackle (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-rackle.wav.

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