carnival
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See also: Carnival
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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.[1] Doublet of carnaval.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkɑːnɪvəl/, [ˈkɑːnɪvl̩]
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkɑɹnɪvəl/, [ˈkɑɹnɪvl̩]; /kɑɹnəˈvɑl/ (referring to pre-Lenten festivals in various Romance-speaking countries)
- (General Australian) IPA(key): /ˈkaːnɪvəl/, [ˈkaːnɪvl̩]
Noun
[edit]carnival (plural carnivals)
- Any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent.
- A festive occasion marked by parades and sometimes special foods and other entertainment.
- 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
- 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.
- (US) 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.
- When the carnival came to town, every one wanted some cotton candy.
- (sociology) A context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given temporary license. Derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.
- 2010, Gulnara Karimova, “Jackass, South Park, and 'Everyday' Culture”, in Studies in Popular Culture, volume 33, page 37:
- 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.
- (figurative) A gaudily chaotic situation.
- a carnival of idiocy
Coordinate terms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]- → Japanese: カーニバル (kānibaru)
Translations
[edit]festival held just before the beginning of Lent
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festive occasion marked by parades
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traveling amusement park
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Verb
[edit]carnival (third-person singular simple present carnivals, present participle carnivalling or carnivaling, simple past and past participle carnivalled or carnivaled)
- (informal, rare) To participate in a carnival.
- (literary) To move about playfully or wildly.
- 1870 July, “Life in the Mexican Capital”, in The Old Guard, volume VIII, number VII, [New York, N.Y.]: [C. Chauncey Burr & Co.], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 507:
- 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.
- 1983, Alan Stratton, The Hunters, London, Sydney, N.S.W.: Futura, →ISBN, page 161:
- Sitting in the Chevy, Saturday night on Main Street carnivaling around her, she told herself that she understood, that Ross had made a mistake, had pre-arranged this celebration for tonight and thought that his date with her was tomorrow.
- 2007, Jonny Glynn, The Seven Days of Peter Crumb, New York, N.Y., […]: Harper Perennial, →ISBN, page 210:
- A sudden bright white flash exploded before me. A kaleidoscope of silver lines drawn in rapid succession carnivalled in a blizzard of raging energy.
References
[edit]- ^ Ottorino Pianigiani (1907) “Carnevale, Carnovale”, in Il Vocabolario Etimologico[1] (in Italian), archived from the original on 2018-09-18
Further reading
[edit]- “carnival, v.”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
carnival on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Mardi Gras on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
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