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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Charnel

Charnel \Char"nel\, a. [F. charnel carnal, fleshly, fr. L. carnalis. See Carnal.] Containing the bodies of the dead. ``Charnel vaults.''
--Milton.

Charnel house, 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.

Charnel

Charnel \Char"nel\, n. A charnel house; a grave; a cemetery.

In their proud charnel of Thermopyl[ae].
--Byron.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
charnel

late 14c., from Old French charnel (12c.) "fleshly," from Late Latin carnale "graveyard," properly neuter of adjective carnalis (see carnal). As an adjective from 1813. The Late Latin word was glossed in Old English as flæschus "flesh-house." Charnel house is attested from 1550s.

Wiktionary
charnel

a. Of or relating to a charnel, deathlike, sepulchral. n. 1 A chapel attached to a mortuary. 2 A repository for dead bodies.

WordNet
charnel

adj. gruesomely indicative of death or the dead; "a charnel smell came from the chest filled with dead men's bones"; "ghastly shrieks"; "the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs" [syn: ghastly, sepulchral]

charnel

n. a vault or building where corpses or bones are deposited [syn: charnel house]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "charnel".

If the rifles had been able to concentrate their bullets into the head of a packed column of cavalry, they might have turned the road into a charnel of screaming horses and bleeding men.

A stockade, a prison camp, stalag, ghetto, torture chamber, charnel house, abattoir, duchy, fiefdom, Army co-op mess hall ruled by a neckless thug.

Polly announcing loudly that she resented being forced to eat in a fucking charnel house, supergluing the sauce bottles to the table.

The Tenebrae had turned it into a charnel pit well before the Iconoclasts razed it, and when the forces of the Accord burn a world, it stays burned!

The Captain who had come before was there and with him two troopers, who looked curiously at the charnel house their sabres had created.

Bridgeburners reached the charnel path, passed around the crouching sappers who were one and all readying the larger cussers.

She knelt in front of the alcove and scanned it quickly, trying to make sense of the charnel heap, doing her best to ignore the smell.

Somehow, I had the presence of mind to replace the body as I had found it, cover it with the oilcloth, close the door, and climb up out of that charnel pit into the land of the living .

A letter has been found in the archives of the New York Museum of Natural History that may help explain the grisly charnel discovered in lower Manhattan early last week.

Yet it was a dread that had been growing within him since he first heard of the discovery of the charnel pit beneath Catherine Street.

He was the second man to enter the charnel pit, after the worker who originally found the bones had fled.

The stench of the foul thing pressed in waves through the chamber with the fetor of a charnel house.

Oppressive mustiness clogged our nostrils, but the charnel stench was gone.

A hint of perfume, of sweat and musk, came to us from their bodies, mingled with the charnel stench of the corpse.

Nora told him about their hasty visit to the charnel pit at the construction site.