Word.ws English Dictionary

rattle sabres

rattle sabres is the alternative form of sabre-rattle.

Meaning of sabre-rattle

Verb

sabre-rattle (third-person singular simple present sabre-rattles, present participle sabre-rattling, simple past and past participle sabre-rattled)

  1. To threaten a big battle or war.
    • Then you speak of "the President's spread-eagle patriotism," his delight in "barnyard language," his "readiness to sabre-rattle at the ripple of a flag,"1969, Lawrence Edmund Spivak, Meet the Press: America's Press Conference of the Air

Forms of rattle sabres

third-person singular presentrattles sabres
present participlerattling sabres
past participlerattled sabres
pastrattled sabres

Questions about rattle sabres

What is rattle sabres the alternative form of?
Rattle sabres is the alternative form of sabre-rattle.

Words near rattle sabres in the dictionary

  1. rattle off
  2. rattle on
  3. rattle one's hocks
  4. rattle one's saber
  5. rattle one's sabre
  6. rattle sabres
  7. rattle snake
  8. rattle snakes
  9. rattle someone's cage
  10. rattle someone's chain
  11. rattle stone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rattle sabres (page history and authors); sabre-rattle (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: “rattle sabres.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rattle_sabres. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.