What does "rattle" mean?

Additional senses

1. 2.To make a clatter with a voice; to talk rapidly and idly; to clatter; -- with on or away; as, she rattled on for an hour. [Colloq.]
2. 3.To cause to make a ratting or clattering sound; as, to rattle a chain.
3. 4.To assail, annoy, or stun with a ratting noise. Sound but another [drum], and another shall As loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear. Shak.
4. 5.Hence, to disconcert; to confuse; as, to rattle one's judgment; to rattle a player in a game. [Colloq.]
5. 6.To scold; to rail at. L'Estrange. To rattle off. (a) To tell glibly or noisily; as, to rattle off a story. (b) To rail at; to scold. "She would sometimes rattle off her servants sharply." Arbuthnot.
6. 7.A rapid succession of sharp, clattering sounds; as, the rattle of a drum. Prior.
7. 8.Noisy, rapid talk. All this ado about the golden age is but an empty rattle and frivolous conceit. Hakewill.
8. 9.An instrument with which a ratting sound is made; especially, a child's toy that rattle when shaken. The rattles of Isis and the cymbals of Brasilea nearly enough resemble each other. Sir W. Raleigh. Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw. Pope.
9. 10.A noisy, senseless talker; a jabberer. It may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, whenever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. Macaulay.
10. 11.A scolding; a sharp rebuke. [Obs.] Heylin.
11. 12.(Zoöl.) Any organ of an animal having a structure adapted to produce a ratting sound. Note: The rattle of the rattlesnake is composed of the hardened terminal scales, loosened in succession, but not cast off, and so modified in form as to make a series of loose, hollow joints.
12. 13.The noise in the throat produced by the air in passing through mucus which the lungs are unable to expel; -- chiefly observable at the approach of death, when it is called the death rattle. See Râle. To spring a rattle, to cause it to sound. -- Yellow rattle (Bot.), a yellow-flowered herb (Rhinanthus Crista- galli), the ripe seeds of which rattle in the inflated calyx.