The word 'rattle' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it as a verb, to describe a sound made by something shaking quickly, or as a noun, to refer to the object itself. For example, "The toy train made a loud rattling sound as it rattled down the track."
Where hay rattle has stemmed the vigour of grasses, wildflowers are benefiting; one of many farming names for this plant was "poverty".
Once part of a lawn, their growth has been gradually lowered with hay rattle, a semi-parasitic plant with lemon-yellow flowers.
Above the rattle of a small boy dragging a Mickey Mouse train toy along the floor and another artlessly playing a xylophone, Cecilia explained that the reunion would be joyful but bittersweet because one of the family would not be there.
Meanwhile I shall run the mower over the meadow until winter, collecting the clippings, while the rattle seed lies waiting for next spring.
If the earth is going to shake, rattle and roll underfoot, as it most assuredly does in San Andreas, is there another man on the planet you'd trust to face down such a seismic catastrophe, and tell it to shape up, shut up and knock that shit off?
SM It has not quite gelled for Manchester City this season, yet they have not lost the ability to rattle in the goals.
Too often the soothing rattle-and-purr of their air-conditioners fades into sweaty silence.
It is further proof of their pessimism that the younger generations afford no sign of a successor to either: Marxism clings on (as Mr Anderson concedes) in niches and crannies of the academy, or in the rattle-throwing antics of Living Marxism, the London magazine which lost a fortune trying to prove that ITV lied about Serbian concentration camps.
Many local observers suspect that Hizbullah is deliberately prolonging the SLA's death-rattle to gain the maximum publicity.
Charlotte Higgins is right to highlight the fact that building a new concert hall in London is shortsighted unless the issue of music education and access to the arts is addressed at the same time (Simon Rattle is waving his baton at the wrong cause, 23 February).
Simon Rattle, the current musical director, has done much to ensure the Berlin Philharmonic's democratic and financial future is secured: one of the conditions of his appointment was that the orchestra be turned into a self-governing public foundation, with the power to make its own artistic and financial decisions.
