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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
funereal
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The local weather was always funereal.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Doctor Turner takes me aside to acquaint me in funereal tones with the details of a colleague's latest symptoms.
▪ In the funereal chill Vassily drew up a chair and poured us both a drink.
▪ Last weekend a funereal air wafted through its four-storey office on the Via Due Macelli.
▪ Night fell upon, and spread its funereal pall over, a field of blood where death held unrestrained carnival!
▪ Passers-by glanced sympathetically at them, unsurprised by the funereal atmosphere of the gathering.
▪ Smoke from a score of chain-smokers wreathed its funereal patterns.
▪ The atmosphere in the room was funereal.
▪ The New Zealanders, appropriately garbed in funereal black, arrive next week to scatter the ashes.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Funereal

Funereal \Fu*ne"re*al\, a. [L. funereus, fr. fentus a funeral.] Suiting a funeral; pertaining to burial; solemn; as, at a funereal pace. Hence: Dark; dismal; mournful.
--Jer. Taylor.

What seem to us but sad funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps.
--Longfellow. -- Fu*ne"re*al*ly, adv.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
funereal

"suitable for a funeral" (mournful, dismal, gloomy), 1725, from stem of Latin funereus "of a funeral," from funus "funeral; death" (see funeral) + -al (1). Perhaps by influence of Middle French funerail.

Wiktionary
funereal

a. 1 Of or relating to a funeral. 2 Similar to a funeral, such as dignified or solemn.

WordNet
funereal

adj. suited to or suggestive of a grave or burial; "funereal gloom"; "hollow sepulchral tones" [syn: sepulchral]

Usage examples of "funereal".

It lifted up, drawing a funereal curtain across the sky and as Chubby gunned the motors and ran for the channel the first racing streamers of cloud spread across the sun.

Every few minutes Hal looked up at his funereal black sails, then crossed to the binnacle.

The French camp is in this crater, stupefied, affrighted, starting up from sleeping,--a funereal swarming.

The public has so long listened to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting guest.

Zanna, with unusual delicacy, saw instantly what I meant and, instead of making a hurtful joke out of it, stepped away from Barong, gathering up the dishes and bowls from our funereal meal.

The lands lay spoiled now, stained with duchan, the trees twisted, barren and blackened, like the hands of rotted corpses thrusting out from funereal cairns.

There was something menacing and uncomfortable in the funereal stillness, in the muffled, subtle trickle of distant brooks, and in the crowding green peaks and black-wooded precipices that choked the narrow horizon.

He pities the room - its darkness as if even weak windowlight would penetrate her skin and accelerate the destruction of her cells, its hushed funereal fussiness.

Now the Navy band was assembled on one side of the grassy hillside, playing appropriately funereal music while the admirals and retired admirals stirred uncomfortably on their folding chairs.

The Colonnades exhilarated her, even if the circumstances were funereal.

From the belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance.

The duke was carried out of the gate of the Vatican: he lay on a bed covered with a scarlet canopy, supported by twelve halberdiers, leaning forward on his cushions so that no one might see his face with its purple lips and bloodshot eyes: beside him was his naked sword, to show that, feeble as he was, he could use it at need: his finest charger, caparisoned in black velvet embroidered with his arms, walked beside the bed, led by a page, so that Caesar could mount in case of surprise or attack: before him and behind, both right and left, marched his army, their arms in rest, but without beating of drums or blowing of trumpets: this gave a sombre, funereal air to the whole procession, which at the gate of the city met Prospero Colonna awaiting it with a considerable band of men.

There came to his nostrils not the expected reek of sulfur but a subtler effluvium of expensive aftershave, together with a few bars of elevator music -- and a natty young man in a sixties vintage suit with narrow lapels and a slim funereal tie peered at him from behind black, very mod horn-rimmed glasses.

The fragrance of innumerable libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall ascend day and night through the arches of his funereal monument.

As it was he was forced to shake hands with her, and forced to listen to the funereal tone in which Mrs Roby asked him if he did not think that Mrs Lopez looked much improved since her sojourn in Hertfordshire.