SATURNALIA • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Saturnalia

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noun

Saturnalia n. pl.

(Rom. Antiq.) The festival of Saturn, celebrated in December, originally during one day, but afterward during seven days, as a period of unrestrained license and merriment for all classes, extending even to the slaves.

Hence: A period or occasion of general license, in which the passions or vices have riotous indulgence.

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Etymology of 'Saturnalia'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Saturnalia" Quotes from Famous Books

... a centre of modesty St. John's Eve, festival of Samoa Samoyeds, menstruation among Saturnalia Scarlet fever, periodicity of Schools, auto-erotic phenomena in Seasonal periodicity of sexual impulse Seduction and menstruation Seminal emissions during sleep Serpent in folk-lore Sewing-machine as a cause of sexual excitement Sexual anaesthesia induced by masturbation ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... they went out, as it chanced, into the meadows that stretch up the hill behind Brackenhurst. Frida remembered it well afterwards. It was the day when an annual saturnalia of vulgar vice usurps and pollutes the open downs at Epsom. Bertram did not care to see it, he said—the rabble of a great town turned loose to desecrate the open face of nature—even regarded as a matter of popular custom; he had looked on at much the same orgies before ...

— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... these verses were written, is commonly played at the Saturnalia of the shoemakers on King Crispin's day. Burns sent ...

— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... luminous account of the Hol[i], which is perhaps the worst open rite of Hinduism, participated in by all sects and classes, we may cite the words of the author of Ante-Brahmanical Religions: "It has been termed the Saturnalia or Carnival of the Hindus. Verses the most obscene imaginable are ordered to be read on the occasion. Figures of men and women, in the most indecent and disgusting attitudes, are in many places openly paraded through the streets; the most filthy words are uttered by persons ...

— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... Belgium speedily resolved itself into a saturnalia that drenched the land with blood and roused the civilized world into resentful horror. As the tide of barbarity swept forward into Northern France, stories of the horrors filtered through the close web of German censorship. There were denials at first by German propagandists. In the face ...

— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

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