knell

If “Superman” had opened to critical and commercial failure, it would have been a death knell for the modern superhero genre as we know it.

From Salon ● Jun. 27, 2026

Changing consumer tastes also spelled the death knell for the retailer, which has struggled like many High Street firms.

From BBC ● Apr. 27, 2026

People on the internet seem to be taking Lindy West’s memoir as millennial feminism’s final death knell.

From Slate ● Mar. 31, 2026

Now, many are wondering: Is the death knell finally tolling for the Cuban Revolution?

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 16, 2026

On the twelfth knell, the bonfire blazes, white and hot.

From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

Time magazine tagged her as one of the death knells of feminism, which seems harsh.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 25, 2017

They worked for him at Modern Photography, Holiday, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country and other publications, most of them gone long before the Internet began sounding its knells for the printed page.

From New York Times ● Jun. 13, 2015

Despite the death knells, Luke Donald spent part of the year at No. 1, and after dropping to No. 3, supplanted Woods at No. 2 by December.

From Golf Digest ● Dec. 5, 2012

All the rhymers who rung metrical knells at her death, deserved the fate, and for like reasons, invoked in "Julius Caesar" on the so-called poet who made "bad verses."

From Memoir of Queen Adelaide Consort of King William IV. by Dr. John Doran

It was appropriate enough that the last dread year of the fourteenth century should be ushered in by funeral knells.

From The White Rose of Langley A Story of the Olden Time by Emily Sarah Holt

The wind howled around me—I felt impatient and benumbed—and, as I stood irresolute, with a moaning chime the church bell knelled upon my ear.

From Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 4 by Various

Then the mournful answer knelled to her heart, and the recurrent spasms of that first agony slowly, surely settled into one dead pain, as the truth was seared into her knowledge.

From Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts

But when the trumpet's warring blast   Had knelled the fate that tyrants know, They proved no laggards at the last,   And sprang to meet their country's foe.

From Cap and Gown A Treasury of College Verse by Frederic Lawrence Knowles

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

From Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature by John Bartlett

But its huge clocks had successively knelled three hours after midnight, and all continued still and silent as the grave.

From Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott

In every traveler's eulogy there is a strain of elegy, and every traveler hearkens to the raven's knelling cry of "Nevermore."

From Time Magazine Archive

While many of the world's thinkers are worried about the proliferation of births, it is the knelling sound of death that keeps us awake at night.

From Time Magazine Archive

Not to be was that manhood!—The death-bell is knelling, The hinge of the death-vault creaks harsh on the ears— How dismal, O Death, is the place of thy dwelling!

From The Poems of Schiller — First period by Friedrich Schiller

O, very gloomy is the House of Woe, Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling, With all the dark solemnities which show That Death is in the dwelling!

From The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood by Thomas Hood

Such memories have linked these hills and caves, These woodland paths, and streams, and knelling waves Past to each sad pulsation of my breast, And made their melancholy arms the haven of my rest.

From The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume II (of 2) by Florence A. Thomas Marshall