death rattle

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

"At the end there can be a death rattle - a sound of hard breathing that can be frightening for people in the room," she says.

From BBC • May 2, 2026

"This is the death rattle of a movement that just cannot adapt to a changing world and to a community that is saying, 'We're not hiding in the shadows anymore.'"

From Reuters • Jul. 6, 2023

The byproduct of Haiti’s institutional and security pandemonium is the death rattle of an economy that was already supine following years of misrule compounded by the pandemic.

From Washington Post • Jul. 7, 2022

I think that’s a sort of death scream, as my mom likes to say — a death rattle, where a thing gets louder and more thrashy when its existence is threatened.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 24, 2022

Boseman let out a mortifying gasp as they departed, which Cora took as his death rattle.

From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead