rattle someone's cage
"rattle-someone-s-cage" is a 18-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“rattle someone's cage” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 21
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To demand attention from someone; to nag, nudge, or remind someone.
Corpus desk
Index EN-rattle-someone-s-cage · rattle someone's cage · English
rattle someone's cage · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 21 letters
- VOW-8 8 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "R" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rattle someone's cage |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 21 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “rattle someone's cage” in English
Rare enough to double-check
rattle someone's cage is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for rattle someone's cage, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is rattle someone's cage, spelled R-A-T-T-L-E- -S-O-M-E-O-N-E-'-S- -C-A-G-E.
Definition
- 1To demand attention from someone; to nag, nudge, or remind someone.
- 2To anger or to annoy someone.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how rattle someone's cage appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Nobody has corrected the problem yet, so it's time to rattle their cage.
If you really want to rattle his cage, ask him about his family.
Synonyms
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.