Word.ws English Dictionary

ruttle

ruttle noun: a rattling sound in the throat arising from difficulty in breathing.

Noun

ruttle (plural ruttles)

  1. (Northern England) A rattling sound in the throat arising from difficulty in breathing.
    • The most common cause of ruttles is acute viral bronchitis and, in young children, upper airway viral infection.2018, Sotirios Fouzas et al., “Clinical Usefulness of Breath Sounds”, in Kostas Priftis et al., editors, Breath Sounds: From Basic Science to Clinical Practice, page 44

Verb

ruttle (third-person singular simple present ruttles, present participle ruttling, simple past and past participle ruttled)

  1. (Northern England, intransitive) To gurgle; to rattle when breathing.
    • Ruttling, heard readily without a stethoscope, is due to air bubbling through fluid in the trachea or bronchi.1973, Ronald Illingworth, Common Symptoms of Disease in Children, page 144
    • His breath ruttled as he blew outward and sent the plants to trembling.2020, Marly Youmans, Charis in the World of Wonders: A Novel Set in Puritan New England, page 216

ruttle meaning in Tamil

ruttle in Tamil

தொண்டை எரிச்சல்

Forms of ruttle

Noun
pluralruttles
Verb
third-person singular presentruttles
present participleruttling
past participleruttled
pastruttled

Origin of ruttle

From Middle English rotelen, ratelen (“to make a rattling sound while breathing, flap”), from Middle Dutch rotelen (“to rattle, wheeze, drone”) or Middle Low German rōtelen, rātelen, rūtelen (“to groan, gasp, rattle”), from Old Saxon hrot, hrod (“snot, mucus”), from Proto-West Germanic *hroþ (“saliva, mucus, snot”), probably ultimately of imitative origin. Cognate with Dutch reutelen (“to rattle”), German Rotz (“snot”).

Questions about ruttle

What does ruttle mean?
Ruttle means a rattling sound in the throat arising from difficulty in breathing.
What is ruttle in Tamil?
Ruttle in Tamil is தொண்டை எரிச்சல். See Ruttle meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ruttle?
Ruttle can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of ruttle?
The plural of ruttle is ruttles.

Words near ruttle in the dictionary

  1. rutting times
  2. ruttings
  3. ruttish
  4. ruttishly
  5. ruttishness
  6. ruttle
  7. ruttled
  8. ruttles
  9. ruttling
  10. Ruttonjee
  11. rutty

Source and license

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