rale

1. (medicine, now chiefly in the plural) An abnormal clicking, rattling or crackling sound, made by one or both lungs and heard with a stethoscope, caused by the popping open of airways collapsed by fluid or exudate, or sometimes by pulmonary edema.Examples: "Michael Colot, aged fifteen days, of a strong constitution, not having been sick from the time of birth, was, on the 22nd of November, taken with a violent cough, accompanied with a rale which could be heard without recourse to auscultation."; "If you were to tell a patient that he had a ‘rhonchus’ in his chest, he would imagine that it was something formidable, while, if you said that he had a ‘râle’ he would not be alarmed."; "But after all the educated classes have a right to expect that their medical man will know the difference between a mitral murmur and a bronchitic rale."Synonyms: cracklesin-plural