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knells

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The slow, solemn ringing of a bell, especially for a death or funeral; poetically, knells signal mortality, loss, and the inexorable passage of time, often used to close a stanza with grim finality.

Detailed Definition
A knell is the sound of a bell rung slowly and mournfully, often for death or a funeral. Austen uses the plural knells to heighten the poem’s comic contrast between serious life events and the speaker’s headache-induced indifference.
Example
Example in poetry:
“How little the Bells, / Ring they Peels, toll they Knells” uses knells for the sounds of funeral bells or solemn announcements of death; “The chapel knells crossed the rain at dusk” makes the noun a sound image; Poe’s “The Bells” famously shifts from jingling bells to mournful “knells”; “The knell of a species” is a modern metaphor for an event that signals an ending or death
Additional Notes
Knells in "Ring they Peels, toll they Knells" is a specialized, old-fashioned word for funeral bell sounds.; Found in the poem, When Stretch'd On One's Bed by Jane Austen
Also Known As
tolling ringing chimes funeral bells
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