Meaning
An ostentatious display or threat of military force made to intimidate an opponent without any real intention of fighting; by extension, any loud, blustering show of menace carried out in words alone. Spelled sabre rattling in British English and saber rattling in American English, and often hyphenated when used attributively. Usually disapproving, implying theatre rather than resolve, and extremely common in diplomatic and business journalism. Regional use: General English; British sabre, American saber.
Origin
The image is the literal noise a sabre makes, rattling in its scabbard or when brandished. Merriam-Webster's research finds the fixed phrase older than usually assumed: its earliest known uses are in the British press - the London Standard of 19 February 1879 sneered at 'sabre-rattling Bobadil' (the braggart soldier of Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, here applied to Disraeli's jingoism), and the Leeds Mercury used it on 3 November 1880 during the jingo disputes over Russia and Turkey - with the expression in regular use by about 1880 and taken up by American newspapers in the early twentieth century. Two popular origin stories, 18th-century Hungarian hussars brandishing sabres before a charge and officers rattling their scabbards as a threat, are judged unlikely given that dating; Merriam-Webster concludes the derivation is simply the sword's noise and that the saber-rattler is more noisemaker than threatener. The Online Etymology Dictionary, reflecting older lexicography, dates saber-rattling to 1922, and the purely non-military, figurative use is later again (Merriam-Webster cites a Canadian newspaper from 1994).
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- rattle the sabre
- rattling sabres
- saber rattling (US spelling)
Usage Examples
- Weeks of sabre rattling along the border ended in nothing more than a jointly worded communique.
- Investors shrugged off the chairman's sabre rattling about launching a price war.
- The letter was pure sabre rattling: legal threats drafted to frighten, never intended to be acted on.