Rattlebones

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1
A tottering person or thing. informal
"[…] a rattlebones of a horse!"
2
A rickety or ramshackle vehicle. informal
"Why, did you expect […] that I should return in the old rattlebones of a britschka which my father bestowed on me at parting? I made a bonfire of it at Milan."

Synonyms

battery bean pole bell bones castanets celesta

Example

"A rattlebones of a woman in a little-girl dress came toward him […]"

Etymology

From rattle + bones.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.