carousal

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   noisy, festive, and often drunken revelry, or an occasion marked by such revelry

   The victory celebration became a night-long carousal in the town square.

Formed in the seventeenth century from carouse + -al. Carouse came through French carrousse from German gar aus ("all out"), a call to drain a drinking vessel completely. Carousal is historically unrelated to carousel, despite occasional confusion between the forms.

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