death rattle
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.35 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The raspy or gurgling sound sometimes made by a person while drawing in or expelling their final breaths before dying.
Example Sentences
- "The death-rattle gurgled in the throat of his opponent; his arms fell heavily to his side."
- "George Martin had died as though in his sleep, so quietly that no one had even guessed. And what Peter had imagined to be his snores had really been the lonesome death rattle."
- "And so this killer—loath to touch a living body—was helpless. He could only wait for an old man's death rattle."
- "There is, however, an alternative view of this bleak period in transit's history. It is our thesis that the crisis is both the death rattle of outdated institutions for delivering transportation service and the painful birth of many new delivery systems."
- "Instead, after this introductory essay, my story begins with the death rattle of the American communist movement and the birth of the New Left."
- "These were the dying days of the Callaghan administration, its soundtrack the death-rattle of the post-war consensus with its basis in Keynesian economics."