rattle off

English[edit]

rattle off (third-person singular simple present rattles off, present participle rattling off, simple past and past participle rattled off)

(idiomatic, transitive) To list or recite quickly.
When I suggested it, he promptly rattled off a dozen reasons that it wouldn't work.
- 2022 October 22, Maureen Dowd, “Ralph Fiennes, Master of Monsters”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:
  When he was 14, he could name all the Bond girls. Can he still? / He rattles off the names, from Honey Ryder to Pussy Galore to Domino to Kissy Suzuki. He said he toyed with the idea of playing James Bond and had a conversation about it at one point, but he asked if it could be a black-and-white period piece set in the ’50s.
(obsolete, transitive) To rail at; to scold.
- 1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “Of the Hard Shifts Mrs. Bull was Put to, to Preserve the Mannor of Bullock’s Hatch; with Sir Roger’s Method to Keep Off Importunate Duns”, in John Bull Still in His Senses: Being the Third Part of Law is a Bottomless-Pit. […], London: […] John Morphew, […], →OCLC, page 36:
  She that vvould ſometimes rattle off her Servants pretty ſharply, novv if ſhe ſavv them drink, or heard them talk profanely, never took any notice of it.

list or recite quickly