Cackling : nm Cluck of the hen when she lays.
Indiscreet, inopportune chatter. What a cackle!
To cut down, to belittle to reduce someone's cackle: to force him to be silent, to put him in his place. This will knock him down.
The expression “Bring down/Belittle the cackle”: Silence someone – Force a person to be less insolent, put them in their place.
In the beginning, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was the cackler or the “talkative woman”.
In the middle of the XNUMXth century, the verb cackle meant "to chat" and the deverbal cackle was used both in connection with an indiscreet chatter, an importunate human being and to designate the cry of certain animals (like the clucking of the hen which has just laid its egg).
At the same time appears put down (someone's) cackle which means “to stop the chatter” disturbing from this person, therefore to silence him.
It is at the beginning of the following century that we will also use the verb belittle, period in which one will also find the versions with the verbs tear down et to lower, without these having survived until our time.
Often used in connection with insolent or full of themselves people that we want to silence, we tend to prefer it now to close the beak.