rat-tat-tat
rat-tat-tat interjection: the sound made by knocking on a door with a hard object (such as a door knocker).
Interjection
- The sound made by knocking on a door with a hard object (such as a door knocker).
- The sound made by firing an automatic machine gun.
Noun
rat-tat-tat (plural rat-tat-tats)
- Such a sound.
- Then it grew louder and more distinct - it was a clear rat-tat-tat.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
- To the steady rat-tat-tat of machine guns and exploding bursts of smoke, amphibious tanks slice across a lake not far from the big green mountains that stand along the world’s most heavily armed border.2023 November 30, Foster Klug, “South Koreans want their own nukes. That could roil one of the world’s most dangerous regions”, in Associated Press
Forms of rat-tat-tat
| plural | rat-tat-tats |
|---|
Origin of rat-tat-tat
Onomatopoeic.
Questions about rat-tat-tat
- What does rat-tat-tat mean?
- Rat-tat-tat means the sound made by knocking on a door with a hard object (such as a door knocker).
- What part of speech is rat-tat-tat?
- Rat-tat-tat can be an interjection or a noun.
Words near rat-tat-tat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rat-tat-tat (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “rat-tat-tat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rat-tat-tat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.