death knell
/dɛθ nɛl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.59 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The tolling of a bell announcing death.
noun
A marker, sign or omen foretelling the imminent end, death or destruction of something.
Example Sentences
- "The sound was the stroke of a bell from the tower of East Endelstow Church. […] The death-knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was being tolled."
- "Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death-knell."
- "The thought was a death-knell to Helen's last hope, and she sank down, quite overcome;[…]"
- ""It is the death knell of an orchestra if it doesn't have its own home," he says."
- "The dirty little secret at the heart of Sex Box, in fact, was that it was a well-meaning and thoughtful anthropological experiment dressed up as a tawdry, tabloid-bating death knell for standards of common decency."
- "A rupture would represent a death knell for the West and would harm the US worker."