Carnivalname

• 1

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

carnivalnoun/ˈkɑːnɪvəl/

• 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

  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

  human-sciencessciencessocial-scienceA 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

  A gaudily chaotic situation.

  • a carnival of idiocy

carnivalverb/ˈkɑːnɪvəl/

• 1

  rareinformalTo participate in a carnival.

• 2

  literaryTo 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.