rattling

comparative more rattling · superlative most rattling

1. Lively, quick (speech, pace).
2. datedemphaticintensifiergood, fine.

   a rattling good lunch

   3 more examples

   “[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer. […]”

   1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC

   To say the truth, Sophia, when very young, discerned that Tom, though an idle, thoughtless, rattling rascal, was nobody's enemy but his own […]

   1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

   'I'd like nothing better this minute,' said Mr Browne stoutly, 'than a rattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good spanking goer between the shafts.'

   1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Dead”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, page 257

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of rattle

plural rattlings

1. rattle (a sound made by objects shaking or vibrating against one another)

plural rattlings

1. alternativenauticalAlternative form of ratline.