death knell vs presage

death knell

noun
  • A sign or omen foretelling the death or destruction of something. 

  • The tolling of a bell announcing death. 

presage

noun
  • A warning of a future event; an omen. 

  • An intuition of a future event; a presentiment. 

verb
  • To make a prediction. 

  • To have a presentiment of; to feel beforehand; to foreknow. 

  • To predict or foretell something. 

How often have the words death knell and presage occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )