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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
rat-a-tat

1680s, echoic, originally of a cooper hammering tubs.

WordNet
rat-a-tat

n. a series of short sharp taps (as made by strokes on a drum or knocks on a door) [syn: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-tat]

Usage examples of "rat-a-tat".

Whatever it was that he had added to the band continued to augment all the music for all the subsequent acts, with jingles, rat-a-tats, hollow clunks, brassy clashes and strange, unearthly shimmers of sound.

The rat-a-tat of attack ads, the charges and counter-charges, the petulant press conferences, the opposition research e-mails and snarling spin doctors all reduce politics to a Hobbesian jungle.