Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A repository for the bones or bodies of the dead; a charnel house.
- adjective Resembling, suggesting, or suitable for receiving the dead.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A hinge, as of a door, window, chest, etc.
- noun The pivot or hinge on which the beaver or vizor of a helmet moved.
- noun A common repository for dead bodies; a place for the indiscriminate or close deposit of the remains, and especially of the bones, of the dead; a charnel-house.
- Containing or designed to contain flesh or dead bodies.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Containing the bodies of the dead.
- adjective a tomb, vault, cemetery, or other place where the bones of the dead are deposited; originally, a place for the bones thrown up when digging new graves in old burial grounds.
- noun A charnel house; a grave; a cemetery.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
chapel attached to amortuary . - noun A
repository fordead bodies . - adjective Of or relating to a charnel,
deathlike ,sepulchral .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a vault or building where corpses or bones are deposited
- adjective gruesomely indicative of death or the dead
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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His chamber is hung commonly with strange beasts skins, and is a kind of charnel-house of bones extraordinary; and his discourse upon them, if you will hear him, shall last longer.
Microcosmography or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters John Earle
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Emperor, was allowed to enter a kind of charnel-house, and to see what had been the lovely gaily-painted vellums lying squalidly piled in heaps.
The Great Book-Collectors Charles Isaac Elton 1869
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First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts, who make it a kind of charnel-house.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836
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The place became a charnel house, and in the middle of the night the survivors fled forth, taking nothing with them except arms and ammunition and a heavy store of tinned foods.
Page 5 2010
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In truth, we found fevers, violent deaths, pestilential paradises where death and beauty kept charnel-house together.
Chapter 15 2010
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The land for the cemetery was originally leased from St Paul's Cathedral, which had used it as a dumping ground for bones being cleared from the charnel house and tiny burial ground around the church.
Burial ground of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake earns protected status 2011
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Each year we build a new addition to the charnel house of contemporary life.
John Feffer: Pinker: Pollyanna of Peace? John Feffer 2012
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From behind the clan house came the cloying reek of the associated charnel house.
Fire The Sky W. Michael Gear 2011
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Each year we build a new addition to the charnel house of contemporary life.
John Feffer: Pinker: Pollyanna of Peace? John Feffer 2012
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Each year we build a new addition to the charnel house of contemporary life.
John Feffer: Pinker: Pollyanna of Peace? John Feffer 2012
chained_bear commented on the word charnel
This word is way too pretty for what it means. Hey reesetee--maybe it should be on your "Worse Than It Sounds" list?
November 11, 2007
reesetee commented on the word charnel
Really? Hmm. I always thought this word sounded creepy. And its root means "flesh."
November 11, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word charnel
Really? What about the root of char then? Are they related? Signed, Too Lazy to Go Look.
November 11, 2007
reesetee commented on the word charnel
It's related to carnal (charnel, that is). Char is pretty interesting, from what I can find. Each meaning of the word has a different derivation. "Char" meaning "to burn" comes, not surprisingly, from charcoal. "Char" the fish and "char" as in charwoman comes from Old English ceorra, "turner," derived from ceorran "to turn." And "char" as in the British informal word for tea (really? I've never heard this before) is from the Hindi c�?, which means, of course, "tea."
I guess I should have put all of this on the char page. :-)
November 11, 2007
ruzuzu commented on the word charnel
"4. The pivot or hinge on which the beaver or vizor of a helmet moved."
--Century Dictionary
April 6, 2011