rattling
rattling adjective: lively, quick (speech, pace). Also the present participle and gerund of rattle.
Adjective
rattling (comparative more rattling, superlative most rattling)
- Lively, quick (speech, pace).
- good, fine.
- a rattling good lunch
- “[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like
Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer. […]”1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
Noun
rattling (plural rattlings)
- rattle (a sound made by objects shaking or vibrating against one another)
Also used as
rattling is also the present participle and gerund of rattle.
rattling is also the alternative form of ratline.
Examples of rattling in a sentence
- To say the truth, Sophia, when very young, discerned that Tom, though an idle, thoughtless, rattling rascal, was nobody's enemy but his own […]1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:
- 'I'd like nothing better this minute,' said Mr Browne stoutly, 'than a rattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good spanking goer between the shafts.'1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Dead”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 257:
Forms of rattling
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more rattling |
| superlative | most rattling |
| Noun | |
| plural | rattlings |
Words formed from rattling
Phrases with rattling
- rattling off
- rattling about
- saber rattling
- sabre rattling
- rattling around
- rattling sabres
- rattling a saber
- rattling a sabre
- rattling through
- rattling the bones
- rattling the saber
- rattling the sabre
4 more phrasesFewer phrases
Questions about rattling
- What does rattling mean?
- Rattling means lively, quick (speech, pace).
- How do you use rattling in a sentence?
- To say the truth, Sophia, when very young, discerned that Tom, though an idle, thoughtless, rattling rascal, was nobody's enemy but his own […]
- What part of speech is rattling?
- Rattling can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near rattling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rattling (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: “rattling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rattling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.