clanky

comparative clankier · superlative clankiest

1. Making a clanking metallic sound.

   My father's first car was a clanky old Volkswagen Beetle.

   2 more examples

   The English band Crass sounded like a bag of rocks: scrabbly drum rolls, clanky guitars, no bass end, the words a jabbery Cockney caterwaul through endless stanzas of common meter.

   2008 January 13, Ben Ratliff, “Easy Slogans, Twinkly Funk and One Busy String”, in New York Times

   "But if so, why do you see so many young children on steam trains - apart, that is, from being dragged along by their fathers, or grandfathers? "I think they enjoy them because they are simply so different, so mechanical, so hot, oily and clanky, so dirty, so 'analogue' in a digital world. They are everything modern life tries to extirpate in favour of silence, smoothness and cleanness. Kids love that.

   2022 February 23, Benedict le Vay, “Part of rail's past... present... and future”, in RAIL, number 951, page 56

2. Providing audible indication of imminent mechanical failure.