Word.ws English Dictionary

rat-a-tat

rat-a-tat is the alternative form of ratatat.

Meaning of ratatat

Noun

ratatat (plural ratatats)

  1. A swiftly repeated knocking sound.
    • A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat.1890 February, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge”, in The Sign of Four (Standard Library), London: Spencer Blackett […], →OCLC, page 72

Forms of rat-a-tat

pluralrat-a-tats

Questions about rat-a-tat

What is rat-a-tat the alternative form of?
Rat-a-tat is the alternative form of ratatat.

Words near rat-a-tat in the dictionary

  1. rat wall
  2. rat walls
  3. rat with wings
  4. rat's nest
  5. rat's nests
  6. rat-a-tat
  7. rat-a-tat-tat
  8. rat-a-tat-tats
  9. rat-a-tats
  10. rat-arsed
  11. rat-baiting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rat-a-tat (page history and authors); ratatat (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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Cite this entry: “rat-a-tat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rat-a-tat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.