Meaning

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

Definitions by Sense

1. Any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent.
2. A festive occasion marked by parades and sometimes special foods and other entertainment.
3. (US) A traveling amusement park, called a funfair in British English.
4. (sociology) A context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given temporary license. Derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.
5. (figurative) A gaudily chaotic situation.
6. (informal, rare) To participate in a carnival.
7. (literary) To move about playfully or wildly.

Example Sentences

Carnival of Brazil

Venice Carnival

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.

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.

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.

a carnival of idiocy

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.

Word Forms

• carnivals
• carnaval
• carnivaling
• carnivalling
• carnivaled
• carnivalled

Synonyms for carnival

Related Words

When Should You Use Carnival?

Use carnival when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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