Rat·tle, n.
 1. A rapid succession of sharp, clattering sounds; as, the rattle of a drum.
 2. Noisy, rapid talk.
    All this ado about the golden age is but an empty rattle and frivolous conceit.   --Hakewill.
 3. An instrument with which a rattling sound is made; especially, a child's toy that rattles 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.
 4. 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.
 5. A scolding; a sharp rebuke. [Obs.]
 6. Zool. Any organ of an animal having a structure adapted to produce a rattling sound.
 Note: ☞ The rattle of a 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.
 7. 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.

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 Cocks·comb n.
 1. See Coxcomb.
 2. Bot. A plant (Celosia cristata), of many varieties, cultivated for its broad, fantastic spikes of brilliant flowers; -- sometimes called garden cockscomb. Also the Pedicularis, or lousewort, the Rhinanthus Crista-galli, and the Onobrychis Crista-galli.

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