carny
/ˈkɑː(ɹ)ni/
carny noun: a person who works in a carnival (often one who uses exaggerated showmanship or fraud).
Noun (1)
carny (countable and uncountable, plural carnies)
- A person who works in a carnival (often one who uses exaggerated showmanship or fraud).
- The Reverend Foster, self-ordained—or directly ordained by God, depending on authority cited—had an instinct for the pulse of his times stronger than that of a skilled carnie sizing up a mark.1961, Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, New York: Avon, →OCLC, page 276
- Bart spies an opportunity to make a quick buck so he channels his inner carny and posits his sinking house as a natural wonder of the world and its inhabitants as freaks, barking to dazzled spectators, “Behold the horrors of the Slanty Shanty! See the twisted creatures that dwell within! Meet...2012 May 20, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club
- Synonyms:
- showie
- The jargon used by carnival workers.
- A carnival.
Verb
carny (third-person singular simple present carnies, present participle carnying, simple past and past participle carnied)
- To cajole, wheedle, or coax.
- The crossing at St. Martin’s Church was mine fust of all; and when the other lads come to it I didn’t take no heed of ’em—only for that I’d have been a bright boy by now, but they carnied me over like; for when I tried to turn ’em off they’d say, in a carnying way, ‘Oh, let us stay on,’ so I never...1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861
- Synonyms:
- butter up, inveigle, sweet-talk, blandander, blandish, cajole, sweeten, fast-talk, canoodle, coax
Noun (2)
carny
- Flattery.
- Synonyms:
- blandishment, sycophancy, flattery, incense, adulation, ass-kissing, ass-licking, gloze, hoomalimali, soft sawder
Synonyms of carny
29 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of carny
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | carnies |
| alternative form | carney |
| alternative form | carnie |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | carnies |
| present participle | carnying |
| past participle | carnied |
| past | carnied |
Origin of carny
Clipping of carnival + -y (“diminutive, hypocoristic suffix”).
Of unknown origin.
Words that rhyme with carny
Questions about carny
- What does carny mean?
- Carny means a person who works in a carnival (often one who uses exaggerated showmanship or fraud).
- What part of speech is carny?
- Carny can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce carny?
- Carny is pronounced /ˈkɑː(ɹ)ni/.
- What is the plural of carny?
- The plural of carny is carnies.
Words near carny in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: carny (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-carny.wav.
Cite this entry: “carny.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carny. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.