carnival

noun

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

   “Carnival of Brazil”

   “Venice Carnival”

2. A festive occasion marked by parades and sometimes special foods and other entertainment.

   “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.”

3. (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.”

4. A context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given temporary license. Derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.

   “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.”

5. (figuratively)A gaudily chaotic situation.

   “a carnival of idiocy”

6. (alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable)Alternative form of carnival; especially in the sense "any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent."

   “To the statement above we may, of course, add that a far greater number have never had the “luck” of seeing a Continental Fair;— the Carnivals of Italy, of France,—a Russian Fair,—or the Carnivals and Jahrmarkts of Germany.”

verb

1. (informal, rare)To participate in a carnival.
2. (literary)To move about playfully or wildly.

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “A sudden bright white flash exploded before me. A kaleidoscope of silver lines drawn in rapid succession carnivalled in a blizzard of raging energy.”

name

1. The season just before the beginning of the Western Christian season of Lent.