Word.ws English Dictionary

Rabelaisian

Rabelaisian adjective: pertaining to the works or period of Rabelais.

Adjective

Rabelaisian (comparative more Rabelaisian, superlative most Rabelaisian)

  1. 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
  2. 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

comparativemore Rabelaisian
superlativemost Rabelaisian
alternative formRabelaisan

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

  1. rabe
  2. rabejacite
  3. Rabel
  4. Rabelais
  5. Rabelaisan
  6. Rabelaisian
  7. Rabelaisianism
  8. Rabelaism
  9. Rabelo
  10. rabelomycin
  11. Rabelos

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.

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Cite this entry: “Rabelaisian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rabelaisian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.