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death knell
death knell
noun
- something that heralds death or destruction
- a bell rung to announce a death
Idioms and Phrases
Something that indicates impending failure, as in His low scores sounded the death knell for his ambitions . The noun knell , used for the ringing of a bell since at least a.d. 1000, is rarely heard today except in this figurative phrase.Example Sentences
The government wanted to reduce labor and costs, but many growers view the law as a quality death knell.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sounded what many considered to be the death knell for the SNC.
They wanted to sound the death knell for the campaign, file their stories, and get out of Memphis as soon as possible.
When you have somebody working for your campaign, like Grooms, who says you can't win, that is the death knell for a candidate.
I now consider it the death knell for traditional publishing.
It is not so now, for when the blacks revolted and drove their masters from the land, the death-knell of civilisation was sounded.
Would the step whose lightest footfall now made her heart leap, ever sound in her ear like a death-knell?
He was extremely perplexed, for to him it was as his death knell, and he commenced setting his house in order.
It made plaintive melody in the nocturnal stillness, bespeaking the death-knell perchance of many.
Amid the thundering of the guns from the citadel, the great bell of the Cathedral clanged the death knell to Arnold's hopes.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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