charnel house
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈtʃɑrnəl haʊs/
- Archaic
:
osario
- Centuries later, the area was used for a Byzantine charnel house and, later, for a tannery, the lined masonry vats of which are still preserved.
Examples
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More and more areas of the world will be turned into charnel houses.
Blog text (27) -
It was like going into a charnel house, going into the forest.
Fiction book (2001) -
From deep within the charnel house, another light winked back at theirs—tiny and red in the shadows.
Fiction book (2002) -
And now it was a charnel house, the table beds occupied by corpses shrouded in bloody, vomit-stained blankets.
Fiction book (1990) -
PHOTO (COLOR): At the western end of the Yenikapi excavations, archaeologists found a maze of ruins, including a multichamber late Byzantine charnel house and a portion of the early city wall.
Academic text (2007) -
After the war, the abandoned building became a charnel house, filled with the remains of those who had perished.
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They designed the charnel house to hold the bones of their ancestors in a respectful manner.
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During the archaeological dig, they uncovered a charnel house containing the remains of ancient warriors.
Synonyms
40
7.5
A place where dead bodies are kept before burial or cremation
15
6.9
An underground room for holding the bodies of several people
1
7.9
An underground space for burying a coffin that protects it and holds family coffins
1
9.9
A building where dead bodies or bones are kept
A building near a church where people's bones are kept
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
charnel + house
The meaning is directly compositional: 'charnel' (a place where corpses or bones are kept) combined with 'house' (a building) yields a building for corpses/bones, matching the given definition. Although 'charnel' is a rare word, the noun+noun compound pattern is regular and cross-linguistically recognizable, so a learner who knows both constituents would be able to derive the meaning.
Etymology
Charnel house comes from an old word charnel meaning 'flesh', so it originally meant a 'house of flesh' where dead bodies or their bones were kept. That's why today charnel house means a building or room for the dead and often gives a dark, eerie image.