Library / English Dictionary

CLATTER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A rattling noise (often produced by rapid movement)

Example:

the clatter of iron wheels on cobblestones

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("clatter" is a kind of...):

noise (sound of any kind (especially unintelligible or dissonant sound))

Derivation:

clatter (make a rattling sound)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make a rattling sound

Example:

clattering dishes

Synonyms:

brattle; clack; clatter

Classified under:

Verbs of seeing, hearing, feeling

Hypernyms (to "clatter" is one way to...):

make noise; noise; resound (emit a noise)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Sentence examples:

Cars clatter in the streets

The streets clatter with cars

Derivation:

clatter (a rattling noise (often produced by rapid movement))

Credits

 Context examples: 

The terrific gong was a frying-pan, hanging on the wall, that rattled and clattered with each leap of the ship.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He clattered all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Meg arranged the tea table, Jo brought wood and set chairs, dropping, over-turning, and clattering everything she touched.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding sound and an exclamation of "What the deuce is to do now?" and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was a crunching of heavy feet, punctuated now and again by the clattering of a displaced stone.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

There was something so big and arresting and virile in the man that the clatter and shouting died gradually away before his commanding gesture and his masterful eyes.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The sheep and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of a donkey's hoofs up the paved road below.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

To identify whether there are aspects of auditory perception that are universal across cultures, McDermott and his team have traveled into places ranging from Boston to remote Amazonia, where they record sounds ranging from the clatter of a noisy diner to the stillness of a woodland path.

(Understanding how the brain makes sense of sound, National Science Foundation)