carnival

plural carnivals · alternative obsolete carnaval

1. Any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent.

   Venice Carnival

   1 more example

   Carnival of Brazil

2. A festive occasion marked by parades and sometimes special foods and other entertainment.

   1 more example

   Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

   2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36

3. USA traveling amusement park, called a funfair in British English.

   When the carnival came to town, every one wanted some cotton candy.

   1 more example

   We all got to ride the merry-go-round when they brought their carnival to town.

4. human sciencesA context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given temporary license. Derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.

   The social environment contains the ambiguous traces of carnival: it resists the ideology of capitalism and, at the same time, reproduces the capitalist social order.

   2010, Gulnara Karimova, “Jackass, South Park, and 'Everyday' Culture”, in Studies in Popular Culture, volume 33, page 37

5. figurativelyA gaudily chaotic situation.

   a carnival of idiocy

present singular third person carnivals · US participle present carnivaling · UK participle present carnivalling · US participle past carnivaled · US past carnivaled · UK participle past carnivalled · UK past carnivalled · alternative obsolete carnaval

1. informalrareTo participate in a carnival.
2. literaryTo move about playfully or wildly.

   A sudden bright white flash exploded before me. A kaleidoscope of silver lines drawn in rapid succession carnivalled in a blizzard of raging energy.

   2007, Jonny Glynn, The Seven Days of Peter Crumb, New York, N.Y.; […]: Harper Perennial, →ISBN, page 210

   2 more examples

   The spot is a marvel of beauty and taste; and here, where dust and sun carnivaled for so many years, thousands of every class congregate to listen each evening to music discoursed for the amusement of oi polloi.

   1870 July, “Life in the Mexican Capital”, in The Old Guard, volume VIII, number VII, [New York, N.Y.]: [C. Chauncey Burr & Co.], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 507

   Sitting in the Chevy, Saturday night on Main Street carnivaling around her, she told herself that she understood, that Ross had made a mistake, had pre-arranged this celebration for tonight and thought that his date with her was tomorrow.

   1983, Alan Stratton, The Hunters, London; Sydney, N.S.W.: Futura, →ISBN, page 161

1. The season just before the beginning of the Western Christian season of Lent.

plural Carnivals

1. alternativecountableuncountableAlternative form of carnival; especially in the sense "any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent."

   To the statement above we may, of course, add that a far greater number have never had the “luck” of seeing a Continental Fair;— the Carnivals of Italy, of France,—a Russian Fair,—or the Carnivals and Jahrmarkts of Germany.

   1873 April, R. H. Horne, The Great Fairs and Markets of Europe, John Holmes Agnew, Walter Hilliard Bidwell (editors), The Eclectic Magazine, New Series Volume 17: January—June 1873, page 436