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

While such a selloff might have been a death knell in years past, it has done little to ease Wall Street’s appetite for crypto.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026

It marks the death knell of the post–World War II settlement that, however imperfect, wrestled the anarchy of war into a framework designed to condition armed aggression on legal justification.

From Slate ● Jan. 5, 2026

“In California, that’s not a death knell, that’s a life force.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 8, 2025

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

Our street is still and silent, Grass grows from curb to curb, No baker's bells With jangling knells Our studious minds disturb.

From Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis by Charles Belmont Davis

Alone!—that worn-out word, So idly spoken, and so coldly heard; Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word Alone!

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

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

From The Claw by Cynthia Stockley

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

At the same time the sad "too late, too late," was knelled in my ears, and I thought of the might-have-been, and rode the merry-go-round of regret's banalities.

From The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne : a Novel by William John Locke

As I stood there in the pulpit, busying me to teach the commandment of GOD, there knelled a sacring-bell; and therefore mickle people turned away hastily, and with great noise ran from towards me.

From Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse by Various

To-morrow—” He fell silent; again in his heart that parting cadence knelled with keen and intolerable sorrow.

From Stepsons of Light by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

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

The looks are bent on the shaking ground, And the heart beats loud with a knelling sound; Swift by the breasts that must bear the brunt, Gallops the major along the front— "Halt!"

From The Poems of Schiller — First period by Friedrich Schiller

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

And ever still, its knelling Crashes in upon my dreams.

From The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar by William Dean Howells