B.
Rattlers
Behind the scenes
That's the name my son gives to the aftershocks that regularly shake our St Albans home.
Rattlesnake, from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language. (New York: The Century Co., 1889)
It's a great description, summing up the noise of the windows, the low level rumble underground and the er, exhilarating sense of potential danger that accompanies them.
Another favourite term is one I heard used by a man interviewed on radio after an early morning shake. When asked to describe its severity, he called it a 'half-legger' - nicely describing that now-familiar feeling of being half out of bed, wondering whether it's going to turn into something big enough to wake the kids for to get them under the doorway.