rattle one's sabre
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English
[edit]Verb
[edit]rattle one's sabre (third-person singular simple present rattles one's sabre, present participle rattling one's sabre, simple past and past participle rattled one's sabre)
- Alternative form of sabre-rattle
- 2006, Theodore Roszak, World, Beware!: American Triumphalism in an Age of Terror, page 96:
- Policies like these, which come close to being plunder, would seem to violate international law, but Washington's response to that is simply to rattle its sabre.
- 2014, Michael Bloch, Jeremy Thorpe:
- While unfailingly courteous to the jury, he could be quite sharp with counsel and witnesses, and rattle his sabre at the press: his first reported words in the case were that any journalist thinking of interviewing a juror 'had better bring a toothbrush'.
- 2019, Erwin Warkentin, The Political Warfare Executive Syllabus Volume I:
- It began to emerge from its hiatus in October of 1935 as planning for a new ministry began as Germany began to rattle its sabre once more.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rattle, sabre.