carnivals

Noun

carnival (plural carnivals)

1. Any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent.
   • Carnival of Brazil
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...2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36
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.
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.2010, Gulnara Karimova, “Jackass, South Park, and 'Everyday' Culture”, in Studies in Popular Culture, volume 33, page 37
5. (figuratively) A gaudily chaotic situation.
   • a carnival of idiocy

See all 8 meanings of carnival