deathknellとは 意味・読み方・使い方

発音

• IPA: /dɛθ nɛl/
• 韻: -ɛl

名詞

death knell (plural death knells)

1. The tolling of a bell announcing death.
   • 1872 September – 1873 July, Thomas Hardy, “‘25’”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1873, →OCLC:

     The sound was the stroke of a bell from the tower of East Endelstow Church. […] The death-knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was being tolled.

   • 1890, Ambrose Bierce, chapter 1, in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge:

     Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death-knell.

2. (by extension) A marker, sign or omen foretelling the imminent end, death or destruction of something.
   • 1901, Upton Sinclair, chapter 10, in King Midas‎:

     The thought was a death-knell to Helen's last hope, and she sank down, quite overcome; […]

   • 2004 June 28, Jamie James, “The Rise of a Musical Superpower”, in Time:

     "It is the death knell of an orchestra if it doesn't have its own home," he says.

   • 2015 February 26, Sophie Gilbert, “Soggy Bottoms and 'Sex Box': The Saucy State of TV's British Imports”, in The Atlantic‎:

     The dirty little secret at the heart of Sex Box, in fact, was that it was a well-meaning and thoughtful anthropological experiment dressed up as a tawdry, tabloid-bating death knell for standards of common decency.

   • 2018, Michael Cottakis – LSE, “Colliding worlds: Donald Trump and the European Union”, in LSE's blog‎:

     A rupture would represent a death knell for the West and would harm the US worker.

   • 2025 January 23, Ned Temko, “Is the West’s liberal template broken?”, in The Christian Science Monitor:

     One day in the not too distant future, we may look back on Donald Trump’s return to power as the death knell of “liberal internationalism.”

参照

• “death knell”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.