junket

plural junkets

1. obsoleteA basket.
2. A type of cream cheese, originally made in a rush basket; later, a food made of sweetened curds.

   I love your meads, and I love your flowers, / And I love your junkets mainly […].

   1818, John Keats, Where be ye going, you Devon maid?

   1 more example

   The Sunday ended in gloom, which even junket for supper in the blue Dresden bowl could hardly lighten at all.

   1904, E. Nesbit, The Phoenix and the Carpet

3. obsoleteA delicacy.

   […] though bride and bridegroom wants For to supply the places at the table, You know there wants no junkets at the feast.

   c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]

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   Goe streight, and take with thee to witnesse it / Sixe of thy fellowes of the best array, / And beare with you both wine and juncates fit, / And bid him eate […].

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

4. A feast or banquet.

   We're often in waiting / At junket or feting, / And sometimes attend an interment—

   1889, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, composer, The Gondoliers […]

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   Conversation is the natural Junket of the Mind ; and most Men have an Appetite to it, once in the day at least […].

   1790, Ambrose Philips, The free-thinker, volume III, number 124, page 95

5. A pleasure trip; a journey made for feasting or enjoyment, now especially a trip made ostensibly for business but which entails merrymaking or entertainment.

   It did strike him as odd, perhaps, that merchants did not dare to go on a junket or plan a congenial dinner without pretending to themselves that it had some business significance.

   1922, Christopher Morley, chapter 9, in Where the Blue Begins

6. abbreviationellipsisbroadcastingEllipsis of press junket.

   Every time anything of note happens – any time there is a junket or a new actor is cast – the issue will be front and centre.

   2025 June 11, Stuart Heritage, “‘Please walk away from Harry Potter’: why the stars of HBO’s new TV show are in for decades of social media hell”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

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   An entertainment reporter who is a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association said Freeman made comments about her skirt and her legs during two different junkets.

   2018 May 24, An Phung, Chloe Melas, “Women accuse Morgan Freeman of inappropriate behavior, harassment”, in CNN entertainment

7. gamblingA gaming room for which the capacity and limits change daily, often rented out to private vendors who run tour groups through them and give a portion of the proceeds to the main casino.

present singular third person junkets · participle present junketing · participle present junketting · participle past junketed · past junketed · participle past junketted · past junketted

1. datedintransitiveTo attend a junket; to feast.

   1688, Robert South, Sermon preached on 8 April, 1688, in Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. The Second Volume, London: Thomas Bennet, p. 414, Iob’s Children junketted and feasted together often, but the Reckoning cost them dear at last.

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   Be careful that you wast not, or spoil your Ladies, or Mistresses goods, neither sit you up junketing a nights, after your Master and Mistress be abed.

   1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, page 2

   ’Tis better than lying abed half the day, and junketing and card-playing all the night, and makeing yourselves wholly useless to every good purpose in your own families, as is now the fashion among ye […]

   1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter XXXII”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume I, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, page 218

   After they had built their water-house and laid their pipes, it occurred to them that the place was suitable for junketing. Once entertained, with jovial magistrates and public funds, the idea led speedily to accomplishment; and Edinburgh could soon boast of a municipal Pleasure House.

   1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 10, in Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, London: Seeley, Jackson & Halliday, page 38

   Synonyms: banquet

2. intransitiveTo go on a junket; to travel.

   It was her belief that the summer folk went junketing off with the first fall of autumn leaves, leaving their cats to starve.

   1943, Patrick Quentin, “The Last of Mrs. Maybrick”, in Marc Gerald, editor, Murder Plus: True Crime Stories from the Masters of Detective Fiction, New York: Pharos, published 1992, page 214

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   Together they made trips to town or junketed over the country in search of furniture and dishes of which Miss Sally had heard.

   1910, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Miss Sally’s Letter

   It is only by much junketing about that one comes to the full realization of what men and women in the main are doing in this country. One learns as he passes from town to town, through cities and across plains, that the general reason for industry everywhere is to get the means to build and support a home.

   1921, Ida Tarbell, “The Socialization of the Home”, in The Business of Being a Woman, New York: Macmillan

   On the boat I met an old art history professor, with whom I junketed around for a while, visiting museums in London and Paris […]

   1985, Herman Wouk, chapter 81, in Inside, Outside, New York: Avon, published 1986, page 549

   These days the astronaut job title has been split into two categories. (Three, counting payload specialist, the category into which teachers, boondoggling senators, and junketing Saudi princes fall.)

   2010, Mary Roach, “He's Smart But His Birds Are Sloppy: Japan Picks an Astronaut”, in Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 28

   Synonyms: gallivant, jaunt

3. transitiveTo regale or entertain with a feast.