Dictionary

clattery en · ADJ

Etymology

From clatter + -y.

Meanings

1. (informal) Tending to cause a clatter; noisy and possibly cumbersome.
   • All his words were poor clattery English like a stutterrer at the front of the class. 1982, Don DeLillo, chapter 14, in The Names, New York: Vintage, published 1989, page 337:
   • The truck’s clattery, loose-valved idle. 2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 6, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Scribner, page 99:
   • There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy, asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage in the way of a piano that the world has seen. 1880, Mark Twain, chapter 32, in A Tramp Abroad, Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, page 341:
   • She was so gay and responsive that one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans. 1918, Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book 1, Chapter 19, pp. 157-158:

Forms