knell means A surname. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 81 out of 100.
knell is pronounced /nɛl/.
Why “knell” is a great word
KNELL — [Noun, Verb] A solemn toll of a bell marking a death or ending; to ring or proclaim by such a sound. 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'). Unlike a 'peal'—loud, joyous, and prolonged—or a 'portent'—which can herald any fate—a knell is a singular, measured pronouncement of finality. It is the iron weight swinging in a winter churchyard, the silence pooling between each tone, the metallic sigh that tells a village one of its own is gone—a sound that does not mark time, but consumes it, dividing all that was from all that will not be again.
Etymology
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”).
noun
- 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.”
- 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.”
verb
- 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 […]”
- 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.”
- To summon by, or as if by, ringing a bell.