Definition of "knell"

knell

/nɛl/

verb
third-person singular simple present knells, present participle knelling, simple past and past participle knelled
1. (intransitive) To ring a bell slowly, especially for a funeral; to toll.
  Quotations
  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 […]
  1647, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, The Spanish Curate‎, act V, scene 2
  “ […] God!—the words of the warlock are knelling in my ears!”
  1816, Walter Scott, “Chapter 7”, in The Black Dwarf‎
  The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knellingFor the year
  1824, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems‎, London: John & Henry L. Hunt, Autumn: A Dirge, page 166
  Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known,Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word—ALONE!
  1846, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The New Timon. A Poetical Romance‎, 4th edition, London: Henry Colburn, Part II, page 86
2. (transitive) To signal or proclaim something (especially a death) by ringing a bell.
  Quotations
  Let thy friends be as the dead in doom,And build to them a final tomb;Let the starred shade that nightly fallsStill celebrate their funerals,And the bell of beetle and of beeKnell their melodious memory.
  October 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Woodnotes, Number II”, in The Dial‎, volume 2, number 2, page 212
  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.
  1909 , Alfred Allinson, The Well of Saint Clare‎, London, John Lane, translation of original by Anatole France, Prologue
  His right hand, clenched into an iron mallet, battered desperately at the fearful face bent toward his; the beast-like teeth shattered under his blows and blood splattered, but still the red eyes gloated and the taloned fingers sank deeper and deeper until a ringing in Turlogh’s ears knelled his soul’s departure.
  October 1931, Robert E. Howard, “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth”, in Weird Tales‎, volume 18, number 3, Chapter 3
3. (transitive) To summon by, or as if by, ringing a bell.
noun
plural knells
1. The sound of a bell knelling; a toll (particularly one signalling a death).
  Quotations
  […] he is able to pierce a corselet with his eye; talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery.
  c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene iv]
  The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
  1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard‎, line 1
2. (figuratively) A sign of the end or demise of something or someone.
  Quotations
  But at the close of the war there was less thought of what [Britain] had retained than of what she had lost. She was parted from her American Colonies; and at the moment such a parting seemed to be the knell of her greatness.
  1879, John Richard Green, “Chapter 2”, in History of the English People‎, volumes 8, Modern England, 1760-1815, London: Macmillan, published 1896, pages 41–42
  The internet sounds the knell for conventional brands, predicts Professor Alec Reed, who has set up an Academy of Enterprise to chart the emerging individual economy. By making price and other comparisons ever easier, the internet strips them of mystique and turns them into commodities.
  1 October 2000, Simon Caulkin, “Taking over by talking back”, in The Guardian‎

Definition of "knell"

knell

verb

Quotations

Quotations

noun

Quotations

Quotations