Definition of "death rattle" []

• A gurgling or rattling sound sometimes made in the throat of a dying person, caused by loss of the cough reflex and passage of the breath through accumulating mucus. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Then he gasped with the death rattle and fell back in a faint; whereupon Fatimah cried out, saying,"
• "The turn of the millennium may have marked the death rattle of American warriorhood, an obsolete form of manhood that has undermined the very basis of patriarchy."