death rattle

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Noun

death rattle (plural death rattles)

  1. The raspy or gurgling sound sometimes made by a person while drawing in or expelling their final breaths before dying.
    • 1840, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 14, in Catherine: A Story:
      The death-rattle gurgled in the throat of his opponent; his arms fell heavily to his side.
    • 1950, Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City‎, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 2001, →ISBN, page 476:
      George Martin had died as though in his sleep, so quietly that no one had even guessed. And what Peter had imagined to be his snores had really been the lonesome death rattle.
    • 2006, Carol O'Connell, Find Me‎, →ISBN, page 277:
      And so this killer—loath to touch a living body—was helpless. He could only wait for an old man's death rattle.
  2. (cricket, by extension) The sound of a batsman’s stumps being broken, so called because this leads to the batsman’s dismissal.

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