knell

UK/nɛl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/nel/

knell verb: to ring a bell slowly, especially for a funeral; to toll.

Verb

knell (third-person singular simple present knells, present participle knelling, simple past and past participle knelled)

(intransitive) 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 […]1647, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, The Spanish Curate, act V, scene 2
- “[…] God!—the words of the warlock are knelling in my ears!”1816, Walter Scott, “Chapter 7”, in The Black Dwarf
(transitive) 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.October 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Woodnotes, Number II”, in The Dial, volume 2, number 2, page 212
- 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.1909 [1895], Alfred Allinson, The Well of Saint Clare, London: John Lane, translation of original by Anatole France, Prologue
(transitive) To summon by, or as if by, ringing a bell.

Noun

knell (plural knells)

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.c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- 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.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
(figuratively) 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.1879, John Richard Green, “Chapter 2”, in History of the English People, volumes 8, Modern England, 1760-1815, London: Macmillan, published 1896, pages 41–42
- 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, […].1954 October, A. Trevor Hodge, “Railways at Belfast”, in Railway Magazine, page 684

Proper noun capitalized: Knell

Knell (plural Knells)

A surname.

knell meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

knell in Bengali

মৃত্যু, শেষকৃত্যের ঘণ্টাধ্বনি, কোনো কিছুর সমাপ্তির সংকেত

knell in Malayalam

മരണമണിമുഴക്കം, ശവസംസ്കാരമറിയിക്കുന്ന മണിമുഴക്കം, അന്ത്യത്തെ സൂചിപ്പിക്കുന്ന പ്രഖ്യാപനം

knell in Kannada

ಸಾವಿನ ಗಂಟೆ, ಅವಸಾನದ ಪ್ರಕಟಣೆ, ಅಪಾಯದ ಸೂಚನೆ, ಮರಣದ ಸೂಚನೆ, ಸಾವಿನ ಸೂಳ್ಗರೆತ, ಸಾವಿನ ತಾರು

Examples of knell in a sentence

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,1751, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, line 1:
The internet sounds the knell for conventional brands, predicts Professor Alec Reed, who has set up an Academy of Enterprise to chart the emerging individual economy.1 October 2000, Simon Caulkin, “Taking over by talking back”, in The Guardian:

Forms of knell

Verb
third-person singular present	knells
present participle	knelling
past participle	knelled
past	knelled
Noun
plural	knells
Proper noun
plural	Knells

Origin of knell

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”).

Words formed from knell

Words that rhyme with knell

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about knell

What does knell mean?: Knell means to ring a bell slowly, especially for a funeral; to toll.
What is knell in Urdu?: Knell in Urdu is گھنٹے کی آواز, ماتمی گھنٹے کی آواز. See Knell meaning in Urdu.
How do you use knell in a sentence?: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
What part of speech is knell?: Knell can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce knell?: Knell is pronounced /nɛl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of knell?: The past tense of knell is knelled.

Words near knell in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: knell (page history and authors); Knell (page history and authors); knell (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Knell (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); knell (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); knell (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-knell.ogg, en-au-knell.ogg.

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