knell

name

1. A surname.

noun

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”).

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.”

   “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.”

2. 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.”

   “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, […].”

verb

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”).

1. 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 […]”

   ““[…] God!—the words of the warlock are knelling in my ears!””

2. 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.”

   “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.”

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