Post
by Richard Frost » Sat Oct 30 2021 9:19am
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2021
sepulchral
[ suh-puhl-kruhl ]
adjective
proper to or suggestive of a tomb; funereal or dismal.
WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF SEPULCHRAL?
Sepulchral “proper to or suggestive of a tomb,” the adjectival counterpart of the noun sepulcher, spelled sepulchre in British English, derives from Latin sepulcrālis “relating to a tomb,” from sepulcrum “tomb.” There is no clear reason for the addition of the h to these two Latin terms as they passed via Old French into English, though it is possible that influence from the similar-sounding adjective pulcher “beautiful” may have been the culprit. Alternatively, because spelling rules became lax in Medieval Latin (which was roughly contemporaneous with Old French) and the letter h had become silent, h started cropping up in words where it had no reason to appear, and the change of Middle English sepulcre to sepulchre in the 1200s could have followed this trend. A similar phenomenon occurred with cāritās “dearness, charity,” which was often misspelled in Medieval Latin as charitas by conflation with Ancient Greek kháris “grace, charm.” Sepulchral first appeared in English in the early 1600s.
HOW IS SEPULCHRAL USED?
Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff old greenish brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and rather terrible, ghastly. In the gay light of the drawing-room she was uncanny and oppressive. But seated in the half-light of the dining-room, sitting stiffly before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a power, a presence. D. H. LAWRENCE, WOMEN IN LOVE, 1920
[Oscar Wilde] began to speak in a voice that might have come from the tomb. It grew monotonous, and was fast becoming painful, when, to the evident surprise of everybody, he smiled as he uttered something in reference to the various definitions of aestheticism. The audience was at once relieved from the sepulchral atmosphere and broke into a hearty laugh which did everybody good. "OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE", NEW YORK TIMES, JANUARY 10, 1882