The raspy or gurgling sound sometimes made by a person as he or she draws in or expels the final breaths in the moments before dying
And so this killer—loath to touch a living body—was helpless. He could only wait for an old man's death rattle.
If you say that one thing is the death rattle of another, you mean that the first thing is a sign that very soon the second thing will come to an end. His rhetoric sounds like the death rattle of a fading leadership. 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. a noise that sometimes comes from the throat or chest of someone who is dying