: a building or chamber in which bodies or bones are deposited
called also charnel house
charnel
adjective
Examples of charnel in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Thousands of homes and a sprawl of entire neighborhoods were transformed into outdoor charnel houses.
—
Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 10 Jan. 2025
For the Himalayan monks of the early teen centuries, the ideal setting for initiation was a charnel ground, where people left their dead to be eaten by wild animals.
—Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 2 Jan. 2025
Flaherty’s descriptions of both the highs (rubies) and lows (charnel houses) of nonstop writing struck me as alien.
—Molly Young, New York Times, 30 Dec. 2024
His third-floor office, in a dingy concrete building across a roaring four-lane road from the Ikeja market, is a charnel house of dead mobile phones.
—Vince Beiser, WIRED, 30 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for charnel
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Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 10 Jan. 2025
For the Himalayan monks of the early teen centuries, the ideal setting for initiation was a charnel ground, where people left their dead to be eaten by wild animals.
—Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, 2 Jan. 2025
Flaherty’s descriptions of both the highs (rubies) and lows (charnel houses) of nonstop writing struck me as alien.
—Molly Young, New York Times, 30 Dec. 2024
His third-floor office, in a dingy concrete building across a roaring four-lane road from the Ikeja market, is a charnel house of dead mobile phones.
—Vince Beiser, WIRED, 30 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for charnel
Cite this Entry
“Charnel.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/charnel. Accessed 3 Nov. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
charnel
noun
char·nel
ˈchärn-ᵊl 
: a building or chamber in which dead bodies or bones are deposited
charnel
adjective
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