Word.ws English Dictionary

death rattles

death rattles is the plural of death rattle.

Meaning of death rattle

Noun

death rattle (plural death rattles)

  1. The raspy or gurgling sound sometimes made by a person while drawing in or expelling their final breaths before dying.
    • The death-rattle gurgled in the throat of his opponent; his arms fell heavily to his side.1840, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 14, in Catherine: A Story
  2. (idiomatic) Activity by an entity (such as an individual, business or ideology) perceived as almost finished, especially if this activity appears weak or futile.
    • There is, however, an alternative view of this bleak period in transit's history. It is our thesis that the crisis is both the death rattle of outdated institutions for delivering transportation service and the painful birth of many new delivery systems.1982, Built Environment
  3. (broadly) The sound of a batsman’s stumps being broken, so called because this leads to the batsman’s dismissal.

Questions about death rattles

What is death rattles the plural of?
Death rattles is the plural of death rattle.

Words near death rattles in the dictionary

  1. death pool
  2. death pools
  3. death rate
  4. death rates
  5. death rattle
  6. death rattles
  7. death ray
  8. death rays
  9. death ridden
  10. death ride
  11. death rides

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: death rattles (page history and authors); death rattle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “death rattles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/death_rattles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.