Meanings
goliard1
Goliard2
plural Goliards · alternative goliard
- historicalA wandering student of the 12th or 13th century, whose convivial lifestyle included minstrelsy and a typical satirical Latin poetry.
There it was more commonly trochaic than iambic, as in the famous drinking song of the Goliards: […]
1903, Raymond MacDonald Alden, English Verse […] , New York: Henry Holt & Co4 more examples
It is a note scornful, defiant, often ribald and profane, that comes into the songs of the goliards and troubadours.
1920, A. S. Turberville, Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition, London: Crosby Lockwood and SonThe Goliard, indeed, can be regarded as a sub-species of the jongleur, and evidence exists that the personnel of the two classes was to some extent interchangeable.[…]The anonymous Goliard known as the Archpoet⁽¹¹⁸⁾ was of higher social standing than most of his confreres and, as a poet, one of the greatest of his class.
1951, Frederick Brittain, The Mediaeval Latin and Romance Lyric to A.D. 1300, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, published 2009, page 16A few lucky Goliards gained a more secure life by being adopted by some rich patron, just as the Archpoet, the most famous Goliard, had himself been taken up by the Archbishop of Cologne. Most Goliards roved from town to town, begging food and lodging, earning some coins by pleasing their audience with their songs.
1996, Jeffrey M. Duban, transl., edited by Judith Lynn Sebesta, Carl Orff: Carmina Burana: Cantiones Profange, page 5Well-known texts such as those of the Roman Catholic Mass and certain Latin hymns were all warped to encompass the secular and satirical purposes of the Goliards. In the hands of the Goliards strict Latin verse fell into a more natural stress-based prosody that better expressed the bawdy themes of drinking, fighting, and love that populated their writing in equal measure.
2008, Thomas Ingoldsby, edited by G. A. R. Hamilton, Introductory: The Ingoldsby Legends and Emopire: The Ingoldsby Legends, page xiii
Origin
- Old Frenchgoliard“glutton”
- EnglishGoliard
Uncertain, possibly from Old French goliard (“glutton”); compare Italian goliardo (“university student”).
More words from Old French
Full word history & related roots →Translations
French goliard
- goliardwandering student
German Vagant
- Vagantwandering student
Polish goliard, wagant
- goliardwandering student
- wagantwandering student
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
goliard. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/goliard
“goliard.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/goliard. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “goliard,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/goliard.
Source: goliard on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.