death rattle vs growl

death rattle

noun
  • The raspy or gurgling sound sometimes made by a person while drawing in or expelling their final breaths before dying. 

  • The sound of a batsman’s stumps being broken, so called because this leads to the batsman’s dismissal. 

growl

noun
  • A similar sound made by a human. 

  • The rumbling sound made by a human's hungry stomach. 

  • An aggressive grumbling. 

  • A deep, rumbling, threatening sound made in the throat by an animal. 

  • A low-pitched rumbling sound produced with a wind instrument. 

verb
  • To play a wind instrument in a way that produces a low-pitched rumbling sound. 

  • To utter a deep guttural sound, as an angry animal; to give forth an angry, grumbling sound. 

  • Of a wind instrument: to produce a low-pitched rumbling sound. 

  • To send a user a message via the Growl software library. 

  • To express (something) by growling. 

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