passing-bell.

1. A bell tolled to announce someone's death or a funeral.

2. Something that announces or marks the death or ending of something.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• toll the passing-bell
• hear a passing-bell
• a distant passing-bell

On the page

The passing-bell sounded once more as the coffin crossed the churchyard.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Singular passing-bell; plural passing-bells. Commonness: rare (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct entry read: bell announcing death/funeral; something announcing/marking a death, illustrated figuratively. Established hyphenated English compound. Literal sound and figurative ending separated. No ordinary collocation made a new idiom. Individually reviewed for a precise writer function, not selected merely for rarity. Original definitions/examples; commonness editorial, not a corpus statistic. Genre suitability does not establish inherent fear or emotional intensity. Writing functions: death announced through sound, a final sign of an ending.