clattery

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

clatter +‎ -y

Adjective[edit]

clattery (comparative more clattery, superlative most clattery)

  1. (informal) Tending to cause a clatter; noisy and possibly cumbersome.
    • 1880, Mark Twain, chapter 32, in A Tramp Abroad[1], Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, page 341:
      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.
    • 1918, Willa Cather, My Ántonia[2], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book 1, Chapter 19, pp. 157-158:
      She was so gay and responsive that one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans.
    • 1982, Don DeLillo, chapter 14, in The Names, New York: Vintage, published 1989, page 337:
      All his words were poor clattery English like a stutterrer at the front of the class.
    • 2013, Rachel Kushner, chapter 6, in The Flamethrowers, New York: Scribner, page 99:
      The truck’s clattery, loose-valved idle.