CARNIVAL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • 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

... about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... scarcely room in the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemen and the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or official duty had brought to the place of meeting. The grave capital of the most thrifty and industrious of nations was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The walks cut among those noble limes and elms in which the villa of the Princes of Orange is embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing wigs, the embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... wounded or burning them to death; wild charges were made, ending in wilder stampedes or bloody repulses; the crackle of flames rose high above the pandemonium of battle and dense smoke-clouds drifted chokingly above this hideous carnival of death. Thus for two days the armies staggered backward and forward with no result save a horrible loss of life. Once the Union forces almost succeeded in gaining a position which would have disposed of their adversaries, but ...

— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... a trip to San Francisco at a time when life seemed a continued carnival season, for there winter is the most delightful portion of the year. We rented apartments in a delightful New England family, named Collins. This, at that time, was the most comfortable way of living, for in no part of the United States did restaurants furnish such good and liberal fare ...

— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... perused without deadly peril to the soul, I at once resolved to fly from such contaminating influences. Knowing that his lordship would not consent to my leaving him, I took the matter out of his hands by slipping out one day during the carnival, carrying with me from that accursed house nothing but the few jewels that my benefactor had expressed the intention of leaving me in his will. At the nearest church I confessed my involuntary sin in reading the prohibited books, and having received absolution and the sacrament, I joined ...

— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

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