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Knell
Definitions
- 1 A surname.
- 1 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."
- 2 the sound of a bell rung slowly to announce a death or a funeral or the end of something wordnet
- 3 A sign of the end or demise of something or someone. figuratively
"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."
- 1 To ring a bell slowly, especially for a funeral; to toll. intransitive
"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 […]"
- 2 make (bells) ring, often for the purposes of musical edification wordnet
- 3 To signal or proclaim something (especially a death) by ringing a bell. transitive
"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."
- 4 ring as in announcing death wordnet
- 5 To summon by, or as if by, ringing a bell. transitive
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”).
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”).
See also for "knell"
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Unscramble this word: knell