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

Future Americans will probably spend even more time on digital devices than they do now, but it will not be the death knell of live entertainment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 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

I shoe the cats with walnut-shells; Tin cans to curs I tie; Ring furious knells at front-door bells— Then round the corner fly!

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 by Various

And o'er them peal the minutes stark, With heavy hammers peal their knells, The minutes sound from belfry bells, The minutes hard of autumn dark, The minutes list.

From Contemporary Belgian Poetry Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell by Various

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

Although their beating hearts with ours kept time, Although their clinging hands we fondly held, We could not walk the path they had to climb, Hardly we heard the death-call when it knelled.

From Memorial Day and Other Verse by Helen Leah Reed

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

I cannot guess nor tell; only it comes and comes, As from a vaster world beyond my door, From centuries of eld, the death of freedom knelled, A host of mortal fears at my door.

From Behind the Arras A Book of the Unseen by Thomas Buford Meteyard

Of all the strange hours of my life it had knelled none more desperate than this!

From The Claw by Cynthia Stockley

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

Oh, very gloomy is this House of Woe, Where yawns are numerous while Big Ben is knelling.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 21, 1892 by Various

As she was walking o'er the fields, She heard the dead-bell knelling; And every jow the dead-bell gave, It cried, "Woe to Barbara Allen!"

From The Book of Old English Ballads by Hamilton Wright Mabie

The bell was knelling: dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 by Sir Owen Seaman