charnel house

American  

noun

1. a house or place in which the bodies or bones of the dead are deposited.

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charnel house British  

noun

1. (esp formerly) a building or vault where corpses or bones are deposited

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Etymology

Origin of charnel house

First recorded in 1550–60

Example Sentences

Scaled up to a necropolis, it could make the right impression, a modernist Hooverville of death in the shadow of our great national charnel house of inaction.

From Washington Post • May 25, 2022

Above their heads: a charnel house of endangered trees.

From Scientific American • Dec. 15, 2021

Its portrait of life as a charnel house may be half the story but in this case, it’s the only half.

From New York Times • May 7, 2021

As Times critic Kenneth Turan put in his original review, the film is “both audacious and astonishing, a vision of a charnel house apocalypse that comes close to defying description.”

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 8, 2019

There was a faint odor of decomposition and another day will cause the vicinity of the viaduct to suggest a charnel house to the olfactory senses.

From The Johnstown Horror!!! or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin by Walker, James Herbert