People in Adelaide on their lunch break have reported a small tremor just nine days after a larger quake rattled the city.

Geoscience reported a magnitude-2.7 earthquake shook the earth from 20 kilometres below the surface near Morphett Vale in the city's south.

Reynella resident Steve Goodyer was among those who felt it in the southern suburbs and the Adelaide Hills.

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"I was just in here watching the news and I sort of started feeling a deep rumble and sort of felt like it was coming from underground," he said.

"Then it all of a sudden ... sort of built up and rose up and [gave] the house a little bit of a shake."

Twitter lit up with people seeking to confirm the earthquake as well as share memes mocking its small scale.

On February 1, a magnitude-3.7 earthquake shook the city just after midnight.

The quake epicentre was at a depth of about 8 kilometres, centred at Murray Bridge, south-east of Adelaide, with people up to 46 kilometres away reporting that they felt the shaking.

Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Jonathan Bathgate said today's tremor was considerably smaller than the one at Murray Bridge.

"That's 10 times smaller on the scale and 30 times less energy but certainly it's given people a bit of a shake," he said.

Adelaide's biggest earthquake was 5.5-magnitude in 1954 and caused substantial damage, but no loss of life.

Other significant jolts across South Australia included a 6.5-magnitude quake offshore from Beachport in 1897, a 6-magnitude earthquake at Warooka in 1902 and a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in the Simpson Desert in 1941 and at Motpena in 1939.