Word.ws English Dictionary

rattlebones

rattlebones noun: a tottering person or thing.

Noun

rattlebones (plural rattlebones)

  1. (informal) A tottering person or thing.
    • […] a rattlebones of a horse!1918, Alice Calhoun Haines, Firecracker Jane, page 195
    • A rattlebones of a woman in a little-girl dress came toward him […]1969, Edmund Schiddel, Good Time Coming, page 34
  2. (informal) A rickety or ramshackle vehicle.
    • "Why, did you expect […] that I should return in the old rattlebones of a britschka which my father bestowed on me at parting? I made a bonfire of it at Milan."1829, Catherine Grace Frances Gore, Hungarian Tales, volume 2, page 156
    Synonyms:
    rattletrap

Synonyms of rattlebones

Forms of rattlebones

pluralrattlebones

Origin of rattlebones

From rattle + bones.

Questions about rattlebones

What does rattlebones mean?
Rattlebones means a tottering person or thing.
What part of speech is rattlebones?
Rattlebones is a noun.
What is the plural of rattlebones?
The plural of rattlebones is rattlebones.

Words near rattlebones in the dictionary

  1. rattle-pates
  2. rattleback
  3. rattlebacks
  4. rattlebag
  5. rattlebags
  6. rattlebones
  7. rattlebox
  8. rattleboxes
  9. rattlebrain
  10. rattlebrained
  11. rattlebrains

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rattlebones (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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