Literary notes about Sepulchral (AI summary)
Writers employ the word "sepulchral" to evoke a sense of morbid stillness, eerie gloom, and otherworldly quiet that hovers between life and death. It frequently appears to modify voices and sounds, lending an almost supernatural calmness or foreboding resonance to dialogue—for instance, when a character speaks with a whisper reminiscent of an echo from a tomb [1, 2], or when a laugh is described as hollow and devoid of mirth [3]. Beyond sound, the term is also used in settings to describe dark, ancient chambers and monuments imbued with a haunting, timeless quality [4, 5]. Whether characterizing the ambience of a nocturnal scene or emphasizing the solemnity of constructed memorials, "sepulchral" enriches the narrative with a delicate balance of terror and unwelcome beauty [6, 7].
- "I am," said I in a sepulchral tone, much as I might have answered to my name at roll-call.
— from David Malcolm by Nelson Lloyd - At length in a low sepulchral voice She pronounced the following words.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. Lewis - A chuckle, hollow, sepulchral, mirthless.
— from Her Weight in Gold by George Barr McCutcheon - Excavations made in 1825 have laid open the sepulchral chamber in the midst of the basement.
— from Walks in Rome by Augustus J. C. (Augustus John Cuthbert) Hare - A sepulchral monument was erected to his memory on the spot where he was killed, near the conflux of the Euphrates with the little river Aboras.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - A sepulchral Lamp was suspended from the roof by an iron chain, and shed a gloomy light through the dungeon.
— from The Monk: A Romance by M. G. Lewis - The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
— from Twice-told tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
