carnival

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

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

   Carnival of Brazil

2. 2
   noun

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

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   A traveling amusement park, called a funfair in British English.

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

4. 4
   noun

   A 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.

5. 5
   noun

   A gaudily chaotic situation.

   a carnival of idiocy

6. 6
   verb

   To move about playfully or wildly.

   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.

7. 7
   noun

   Alternative 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.

8. 8
   noun

   a festival marked by merrymaking and processions

Etymology

From Middle French carnaval, from Italian carnevale, possibly from the Latin phrase carnem levāmen (“meat dismissal”). Other scholars suggest Latin carnuālia (“meat-based country feast”) or carrus nāvālis (“boat wagon; float”) instead. Doublet of carnaval.