knell meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

knell

verb

CA, UK, US /nɛl/ · AU /nel/

Etymology From Middle English knyllen, from Old English cnyllan (“to strike; knock; clap”), from Proto-West Germanic *knuʀlijan, from Proto-Germanic *knuzlijaną (“to beat; push; mash”), from Proto-Indo-European *gen- (“to squeeze, pinch, kink, ball up”).

To ring a bell slowly, especially for a funeral; to toll.

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:

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The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year1824, 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:

To signal or proclaim something (especially a death) by ringing a bell.

Let thy friends be as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell 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 [1895], Alfred Allinson, The Well of Saint Clare, London: John Lane, translation of original by Anatole France, Prologue:

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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:

To summon by, or as if by, ringing a bell.

Derived terms: unknelled

knell

noun

The sound of a bell knelling; a toll (particularly one signalling a death).

[…]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, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iv]:
I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

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The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, line 1:

Figuratively A sign of the end or demise of something or someone.

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:
At Ballymacarrett, the main line diverges to the right on its way to Newcastle. All services were discontinued on it in 1950, and the abandonment order finally rang the knell of faint hopes that services would be restored as far as Comber, […].1954 October, A. Trevor Hodge, “Railways at Belfast”, in Railway Magazine, page 684:

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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:

Derived terms: death knell, soul knell

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.

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Conjugation of “knell”, all tenses