Word.ws English Dictionary

rattling the bones

rattling the bones is the present participle and gerund of rattle the bones.

Meaning of rattle the bones

Verb

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

  1. (obsolete, slang) To play dice.
    • Little Mr. Crow shook the dice up and down in his balled hands so long that the Butcher growled "Come on! Come on! Get done, man!" He continued to rattle the bones between his palms, and the Butchers red face twisted up into a scowl.1902 March, John Oxenham, “The Legion of the Lost”, in Macmillan's Magazine, volume 85, number 509, pages 386–87

Questions about rattling the bones

What is rattling the bones the present participle and gerund of?
Rattling the bones is the present participle and gerund of rattle the bones.

Words near rattling the bones in the dictionary

  1. rattling one's hocks
  2. rattling one's saber
  3. rattling one's sabre
  4. rattling sabres
  5. rattling someone's cage
  6. rattling the bones
  7. rattling the saber
  8. rattling the sabre
  9. rattling through
  10. rattlingly
  11. rattlingness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rattling the bones (page history and authors); rattle the bones (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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