death rattle

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The raspy or gurgling sound sometimes made by a person while drawing in or expelling their final breaths before dying.
  2. Activity by an entity (such as an individual, business or ideology) perceived as almost finished, especially if this activity appears weak or futile.
  3. The sound of a batsman’s stumps being broken, so called because this leads to the batsman’s dismissal.

Pronunciation

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-death rattle.wav

Word forms

death rattle death rattles death-rattle
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.