Carnival
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): (n.) Any merrymaking, feasting, or masquerading, especially when overstepping the bounds of decorum; a time of riotous excess.
(2): (n.) A festival celebrated with merriment and revelry in Roman Gatholic countries during the week before Lent, esp. at Rome and Naples, during a few days (three to ten) before Lent, ending with Shrove Tuesday.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [2]
a period of festivity in Roman Catholic countries, beginning on the day after the Epiphany, and ending at the commencement of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, resembling the Lupercalia of the Romans and the Yule-feasts of the Saxons. Some derive the word from caro (carnis), flesh, and vale, to bid adieu, i. q. farewell to flesh; others from the Italian carne, flesh, and avallare, to swallow. In mediaeval Latin it is called carnelevamen, carniprivium. The Carnival owes its origin to the pagan festivals, and pious Roman Catholics themselves have testified their sense of the scandal which this season occasions. In Rome the Carnival is observed with revelry, masquerades, feasts, and grotesque processions. The Greeks have a similar period, which they call Ἀπόχρεως , Apocreos; it comprehends the week preceding their Lent, during which, as Marinus says, "Unusquisque Pro Facultate Sua, Laute Et Opipar È Convivatur." A good account of the Roman Carnival is given in Appleton's Cyclopaedia, 3:447. See also Nicolai, Comment. De Ritu Bacchrasw Oiorum (Helmst. 1679, 4to); Zeuner, Bacchanalia Christianorum (Jena, 1699, 4to); Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [3]
In Roman Catholic countries the name given to a season of feasting and revelry immediately preceding Lent, akin to the Saturnalia of the Romans.
