CARNIVAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Carnival

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/kˈɑrnəvəl/ Listen

noun

Carnival n.

A festival celebrated with merriment and revelry in Roman Catholic countries during the week before Lent, esp. at Rome and Naples, during a few days (three to ten) before Lent, ending with Shrove Tuesday. "The carnival at Venice is everywhere talked of."

Any merrymaking, feasting, or masquerading, especially when overstepping the bounds of decorum; a time of riotous excess. "He saw the lean dogs beneath the wall Hold o'er the dead their carnival"

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Etymology of 'Carnival'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Carnival" Quotes from Famous Books

... done in tracing the history and progress of this earth of ours, as written upon the rocks, among which geology has been so long delving? 'What are the peepers?' asked the naturalist. 'They are newts, little lizards,' answers a learned pandit. 'They are spirits of the bog, myths, that hold their carnival in the early grass of the marshy pools,' says the theorist and poet, who believes in the idealities of a poetic fancy. 'They are frogs,' says a third, who is ready to chop any amount of logic in ...

— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... drowsy summer in the flowering limes Had laid her down at ease, Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes Summoned the wandering bees To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival Within that ...

— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... football-grounds would be heavily hit, too. And there was to be a monster roller-skating carnival at Olympia. ...

— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... the giddy rout, standing in it like a rock in a whirlpool. He did rejoice in the Carnival, but only because it ...

— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... unnaturally; for we can recall that often, often, when the window-panes of a life are smoky with the breath of suffering, just such criticisms as these are offered voluminously. We are hard folks. There seems a strain of cruelty in our blood which sometimes gloats over suffering as at a carnival. Were these men vultures, that wait to watch with joy a wounded soldier die? Of what is our nature builded, that we are cruel as the unreasoning beasts? These harsh friends are voices from our own pitiless hearts, and ought to ...

— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

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