Rabelaisian
Rabelaisian adjective: pertaining to the works or period of Rabelais.
Adjective
Rabelaisian (comparative more Rabelaisian, superlative most Rabelaisian)
- Pertaining to the works or period of Rabelais.
- In Italy, as in Rabelaisian France, the carnival entered not only elite theatrical performance and engravings but also the printed word.2006, Todd P. Olson, “The Street Has Its Masters: Caravaggio and the Socially Maerginal”, in Genevieve Warwick, editor, Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception, page 72
- Possessing a style of satirical humour characterized by exaggerated or grotesque characters and coarse jokes.
- For although of unexceptionable morality, and addressed virginibus puerisque, the stories and illustrations with which this and others of these collections abound are frequently of a very Rabelaisian character.1889, William George Aston, A History of Japanese Literature, Book VI, chapter VII, page 343
- The smiths themselves were a grand lot of fellows, full of a robust, and sometimes Rabelaisian sense of humour, and between "heats," they could be most entertaining.1945 January and February, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 13
Forms of Rabelaisian
| comparative | more Rabelaisian |
|---|---|
| superlative | most Rabelaisian |
| alternative form | Rabelaisan |
Origin of Rabelaisian
Calque of French rabelaisien.
Words formed from Rabelaisian
Questions about Rabelaisian
- What does Rabelaisian mean?
- Rabelaisian means pertaining to the works or period of Rabelais.
- What part of speech is Rabelaisian?
- Rabelaisian is an adjective.
Words near Rabelaisian in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Rabelaisian (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:
Cite this entry: “Rabelaisian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rabelaisian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
