"rattle" = have sexual intercourse with, 2001

[Garson O'Toole]

Rattling is used as part of a phrase with a sexual meaning in "Doom
Pussy" in 1967. (Some list members will remember that "Doom Pussy"
also contains an early appearance of "whole nine yards".)

Cite: 2008, Sex Slang by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, Page 147,
Routledge, New York. (Google Books preview)

rattle noun - give a rattle
to have intercourse with a female
IRELAND, 2001
He's giving her a rattle, no doubt about it - Paul Howard, The Teenage
Dirtbag Years 2001

rattle verb - rattle someone's knickers
to have sex US 1967
I wonder who's rattling her knickers. - Elaine Shepard, The Doom Pussy 1967

http://books.google.com/books?id=csoUlMw_xnIC&q=rattle#v=snippet&


Here is some more context and a link for The Doom Pussy citation:

Cite: 1967, The Doom Pussy by Elaine Shepard, GB Page 67, Trident
Press, (Google Books snippet only; Not verified on paper)

GB Page 67
"She looks like a gahdam Alpine milkmaid," Nails said.
"Hmmmm," hmmmmmed Smash, "I wonder who's rattling her knickers."

GB Page 130
"That big old gal is ready for some rib-rattling clutch butt," said Nails.

http://books.google.com/books?id=K9fSAAAAIAAJ&q=rattling#search_anchor

The "rib-rattling" sentence is included simply because it is in the
same book and it illustrates an associational usage.


On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "rattle" = have sexual intercourse with, 2001
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:51 PM -0500 2/22/11, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>>
>>  > >
>>>  >Green's Dictionary of Slang has it from 1966, in Trimble's _5000 Adult
>>>  >Sex Words and Phrases_. GDoS also includes a bracketed quote from
>>>  >1661, from a bawdy poem about the rattling of buttocks:
>>>  >
>>>  >http://books.google.com/books?id=vCpLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA82
>>>  >
>>>  No offense to Jonathan, but it looks to me as though _rattle_ in this
>>>  context ("he made her old buttocks to rattle") means 'rattle', not
>>>  'have sex with' or anything of the sort, even though the context is
>>>  that of having sex.
>>
>>...which is why the quote is in brackets in the dictionary--sexual
>>context, but not actually showing the use of this sense of the word.
>
> I've always thought, maybe incorrectly, that the OED type brackets
> were used for marginal or possible instances of the relevant sense of
> the item in a given entry, i.e. here if you can't tell from the
> context whether "rattle" means 'fuck' or 'roger', but in this case my
> understanding is that even though it is a sexual context, "rattle"
> clearly has its ordinary value here ('move quickly or noisily') and
> not its 20th century euphemistic one, for which lord knows there were
> many expressions to choose in the 17th-19th c. era (cf. the several
> pages worth provided by Farmer & Henley under "greens").
>
>>(And it's "Jonathon", by the way.)
>
> That I knew but had forgotten.  Qua Laurence-with-a-U, I understand the issue.
>
> LH
>
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