goliardic

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adjective

Of or pertaining to Goliards, wandering medieval students who earned money by singing and reciting poetry.

Scrabble 13

Meanings

adjectivegoliardic (not comparable)

alternative Goliardic

  1. not comparableOf or pertaining to Goliards, wandering medieval students who earned money by singing and reciting poetry.

    Many poems in the collection known as Carmina Burana, are believed to be of goliardic origin.

    1999, Norman F. Cantor, The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, page 198
    2 more examples

    Minstrels and goliardic clerics - priests, monks and university students who dropped out, travelled all over Europe and composed loose or satirical works - had been and continued to be the creators of fabliaux and interludes.

    1982, Piero Boitani, “English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”, in Joan Krakover Hall, transl., [1980, La narrativa del Medioevo inglese], published 1986, page 28

    For the Carmina Burana, see the introductory essay on goliardic poetry (i.e., the recreational poetry of medieval clerics) in Edward Blodgett and Arthur Swanson's translation, The Love Songs of the Carmina Burana (1987).

    2004, Anne L. Klinck, Anthology of Ancient and Medieval Woman's Song, page 89
  2. not comparableOf or pertaining to a form of medieval lyric poetry that typically celebrated licentiousness and drinking.

    References to rape occur in a variety of literary genres, whether we think of the Indian princess in the goliardic epic Herzog Ernst[…].

    2011, Albrecht Classen, Sexual Violence and Rape in the Middle Ages: A Critical Discourse in Premodern German and European Literature, page 83
    2 more examples

    This basic structure was used as long as the medieval Latin lyric flourished; the goliardic poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries still retain it.

    1961, Phillip Damon, Modes of Analogy in Ancient and Medieval Verse, page 304

    The concept of goliardic poetry rests on a series of stylistic traits and the identification of the corpus with the figure of the wandering goliard.

    1999, Miriam Cabré, Footnote: Cerverí de Girona and His Poetic Traditions, page 53

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

goliardic. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/goliardic

MLA

“goliardic.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/goliardic. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “goliardic,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/goliardic.

Source: goliardic on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.