carols

Noun

carol (plural carols)

1. (historical) A round dance accompanied by singing.
   • The carol, a combination of dance, music and song performed by a group, has a parallel history [to the mystery plays]. Although it existed earlier as a secular form – the round dance of which St Hugh's biographer was reminded by the shafts at Lincoln – it seems to have been turned to pious uses...2010, Stephen Medcalf, “On Reading Books from a Half-alien Culture”, in Brian Cummings, Gabriel Josipovici, editors, The Spirit of England: Selected Essays of Stephen Medcalf, Abingdon, Oxon.; New...
2. A ballad or song of joy.
   • The humane mortals want their winter heere / No night is now with hymme or carroll bleſt; / Therefore the Moone (the gouerneſſe of floods) / Pale in her anger, waſhes all the aire; / That Rheumaticke diſeaſes do abound.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Nights Dreame. […] (First Quarto), London: […] [Richard Bradock] for Thomas Fisher, […], published 1600, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]
   1. (specifically) A (usually traditional) religious or secular song sung at Christmastime.
      • They sang a Christmas carol.
3. (obsolete) A small closet or enclosure built against the inner side of a window of a monastery's cloister, to sit in for study.
   • Carol, or Carrel. A little pew, or closet, in a cloister, to sit and read in. They were common in greater monasteries, as Duram, Gloucester, Kirkham in Yorkshire, &c.; and had their name from the carols, or sentences inscribed on the walls about them, which often were couplets in rhyme. [Carola...[1822, Edward James Willson, compiler, “Carol, or Carrel”, in A Glossary of Technical Terms, Descriptive of Gothic Architecture: […], 3rd edition, London: […] J[ohn] Taylor, […]; J. Britton, […]; and...

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