a sound produced by a person immediately preceding death, resulting from the passage of air through the mucus in the throat.
Origin
1820-30
British Dictionary definitions for death rattle
death rattle
noun
1.
a low-pitched gurgling sound sometimes made by a dying person, caused by air passing through an accumulation of mucus in the trachea
death rattle in Medicine
death rattlen. 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.