Other forms: clattering, clattered, clatters
To clatter is to make a rattling noise of hard things knocking together. Plates clattered, a clatter of hooves, clattering down the stairs.
The sound is hard, irregular and repeated — cutlery, hooves, scaffolding — and it is loud enough to be a complaint. As a noun a clatter is that noise. Note clattering; and that clatter is onomatopoeic and Old English, with Dutch klateren doing exactly the same work, each language having heard the same thing.
1verbclatterTo make a rattling noise of hard things knocking together.
“The pans clattered to the floor when the cat jumped onto the shelf.”
2nounnoiseSuch a noise.
“We heard the clatter of dishes from the kitchen.”
clatter is a rattling noise.
Old English clatrian is onomatopoeic. Dutch klateren and kletteren come from the same noise, formed independently from the sound itself.
Old English
*clatrian
Middle English
clatren — to make a rattling sound
English, today
clatter
From Middle English clatren (“to make a rattling sound”), from Old English clatrian (attested as the Late Old English - gerund clatrung), of onomatopoeic origin. Compare Dutch klateren, kletteren. The noun, derived from the verb, is first attested in the 14th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sounds & Noises, Hitting & Pushing