death knell

kuolinkello

kuoleman enne The tolling of a bell announcing death.
1873, (w), A Pair of Blue Eyes, ch. 25:

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.

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

The thought was a death-knell to Helen's last hope.

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