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''charnel'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''charnel'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

charnel - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

charnel (plural charnels)

  • A chapel attached to a mortuary.
  • A repository for dead bodies.
    • ✤ When Lazarus left his charnel -cave,
      ⁠And home to Mary’s house return’d,
      ⁠Was this demanded—if he yearn’d
      To hear her weeping by his grave?      1

Adjective

charnel (comparative more charnel, superlative most charnel)

  • Of or relating to a charnel, deathlike, sepulchral.
    • ✤ He murmured to himself with dull despair,
      Here Faith died, poisoned by this charnel air.      2

Noun

charnel (plural charnels)

  • (historical) Part of a helm, now usually identified as the hinge (near the neck) by which the helm was secured to the breastplate.
    • ✤ The knight did as he was desired, and broke his spear twice on the very charnel of his helmet. It being now Sir William Cecil’s turn, each knight charged his spear directly towards the other’s head, and galloping on, both lances […]3
    • ✤ 1 Are these the charnels, or pinnacles of helmets? See Meyrick, […]4
    • ✤ [page 78:] […] knight being struck on the charnel, a device for attaching the helm to the breastplate […] [page 497:] Most of the knights at this passage of arms were wearing sallets with bevors or armets with wrappers. Here we have a rare exception, since reference to the charnel indicates that Joan de Camós is wearing a helm. Given the effect of this particular spear stroke, it can be inferred that he was struck high on the charnel, near the neck, which would have made him choke or gag.5

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: [tʃɑːɹnəl]
  • (UK) IPA: [tʃɑːnəl]
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)nəl

Etymology 1

From Middle English charnel, from Old French charnel, carnel, from Late Latin carnāle (“graveyard”), from Latin carnālis, or possibly an alteration of Anglo-Norman charner, from Medieval Latin carnārium (“charnel”). Displaced Middle English fleshusse, from Old English flǣsċhūs.

Etymology 2

From Old French charnel, from Latin cardinālis (“relating to a hinge”); related to French charnière.

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXXI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 50: ↩

  2. 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night: ↩

  3. 1836, George Payne Rainsford James, Darnley, Or the Field of the Cloth of Gold, page 134: ↩

  4. 1836, Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, page 401: ↩

  5. 2010, Noel Fallows, Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia, Boydell Press, →ISBN: ↩

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Secondary

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