Other forms: jangling, jangles, jangled
To jangle is to make a harsh ringing clatter. Keys jangle, jangling bells, a jangle of metal.
It is the sound of loose metal knocking together, harsher than jingle and less musical. Jangled nerves is the fixed figurative phrase, and it borrows the discordance exactly. Note that the word once meant to chatter or quarrel, which is a long way from keys and shows how the sound sense took over.
1verbjangleTo make a harsh ringing clatter.
“The prison guard's keys jangled as he walked down the corridor.”
jangle is a harsh sound.
Middle English janglen meant to chatter or quarrel, from Old French. The sense of harsh noise developed later.
Old Dutch
*jangelon — to jeer
Old French
jangler — to chatter, gossip; to argue noisily; to bawl
Middle English
janglen — to talk excessively, chatter; to talk idly, gossip; to nag; to complain, grumble; to argue, debate; to discuss, talk; to talk indistinctly, jabber; to make a noise or outcry; of a bird: to chatter, twitter
English, today
jangle
From Middle English janglen (“to talk excessively, chatter; to talk idly, gossip; to nag; to complain, grumble; to argue, debate; to discuss, talk; to talk indistinctly, jabber; to make a noise or outcry; of a bird: to chatter, twitter”)changel, changelen, gangelen, ganglen, ganglien, iangel, iangell, iangil, iangill, iangille, iangylle, jangelen, jangillen, jangli, jengelen, yangle, from Old French jangler (“to chatter, gossip; to argue noisily; to bawl”)gengler, jengler; further etymology uncertain, perhaps from Old Dutch jangelon (“to jeer”) (compare Middle Dutch jangelen (“to murmur, grumble, buzz, mutter, drone, simmer”), modern Dutch jengelen (“to whine, persistently nag, whimper”), though the Oxford English Dictionary finds this improbable) and ultimately imitative of the sound.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA