knell
/nɛl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.59 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The sound of a bell knelling; a toll (particularly one signalling a death).
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "I’ll make thee sick at heart, before I leave thee, And groan, and die indeed, and be worth nothing, Not worth a blessing nor a bell to knell for thee […]"
- "“[…] God!—the words of the warlock are knelling in my ears!”"
- "The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year"
- "Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known, Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word—ALONE!"
- "Let thy friends be as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory."
- "The church bells knelled the peaceful ending of the day, while the purple shades of night descended sadly and majestically on the low chain of neighbouring hills."
Etymology
From Middle English knyllen, from Old English cnyllan (“to strike; knock; clap”), from Proto-West Germanic *knuʀlijan, from Proto-Germanic *knuzlijaną (“to beat; push; mash”), from Proto-Indo-European *gen- (“to squeeze, pinch, kink, ball up”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /nɛl/
- British English: /nɛl/