death knell

• death-knell

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death knell (plural death knells)

1. The tolling of a bell announcing death.
   • 1873, Thomas Hardy, chapter 25, in A Pair of Blue Eyes:

     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.

   • 1890, Ambrose Bierce, chapter 1, in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge:

     Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death-knell.

2. (idiomatic, by extension) A sign or omen foretelling the death or destruction of something.
   • 1901, Upton Sinclair, chapter 10, in King Midas:

     The thought was a death-knell to Helen's last hope.

   • 2004 June 28, Jamie James, “The Rise of a Musical Superpower”, in Time:

     "It is the death knell of an orchestra if it doesn't have its own home," he says.

   • 2018, Michael Cottakis – LSE, “Colliding worlds: Donald Trump and the European Union”, in LSE's blog‎:

     A rupture would represent a death knell for the West and would harm the US worker.

• “death knell”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.