carnival

The word 'carnival' conceals a surprisingly austere origin beneath its associations with excess, color, and revelry.‍​‍​‌​‌​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍​‍​‍​‍​‍​‍​‌​‍​‍​‍​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌ It derives from Italian 'carnevale,' which traces to Medieval Latin 'carnelevārium,' from the phrase 'carnem levāre' -- literally 'to remove meat.' The word was born from the Christian liturgical calendar: the carnival season was the period of feasting and celebration immediately before Lent, the forty-day period of fasting and penance leading up to Easter, during which the faithful abstained from eating meat.

The Latin elements are transparent. 'Carnem' is the accusative of 'carō' (flesh, meat), from PIE *ker- (to cut) -- the same root that produced 'carnivore' (meat-eater), 'carnal' (of the flesh), 'carnage' (a slaughter, literally a heap of flesh), and 'incarnation' (the taking on of flesh). 'Levāre' means 'to lift up, to remove,' from PIE *legʷʰ- (light in weight), which also produced 'levity,' 'alleviate,' 'elevator,' and 'relevant' (literally 'lifting up again').

A widely circulated folk etymology derives 'carnival' from 'carne vale,' meaning 'farewell to meat,' interpreting 'vale' as the Latin imperative 'farewell.' While this is not the precise historical derivation (the documentary evidence favors 'carnem levāre'), it captures the essential meaning so perfectly that even some medieval writers believed it, and the two explanations are not as far apart as they might seem -- both describe the same cultural reality of bidding goodbye to meat.

The festival of carnival has deep roots in pre-Christian European festivities. The Roman Saturnalia, the Greek Dionysia, and various Celtic and Germanic winter festivals involved many of the same elements -- feasting, masking, social inversion, and licensed misbehavior. When Christianity spread across Europe, these existing celebrations were absorbed into the liturgical calendar and reinterpreted as the final indulgence before Lent. The word 'carnival,' however, is specifically medieval Christian in origin, dating to the reorganization of the church year in the early medieval period.

The Italian 'carnevale' is first attested in the 14th century, and the celebration was already elaborate in Venice by that time. The Venetian carnival, with its iconic masks and costumes, became the most famous expression of the tradition in Europe. English borrowed the word in the mid-16th century, with the earliest known use dating to 1549.

The semantic evolution of 'carnival' followed two paths. In Catholic countries, the word retained its connection to the pre-Lenten season, producing the great carnivals of Venice, Rio de Janeiro, Trinidad, and New Orleans (where 'Mardi Gras,' literally 'Fat Tuesday,' is the carnival's climax -- the last day to eat rich, fatty foods before Ash Wednesday). In English, particularly in Protestant countries where Lent was less strictly observed, 'carnival' gradually detached from the liturgical calendar and came to mean any large public festivity or, by the 19th century, a traveling amusement show with rides, games, and sideshows.

The word's relatives illuminate the conceptual world it inhabits. 'Carnivore' is literally a meat-eater; 'carnal' means 'of the flesh' in both its literal and euphemistic senses; 'charnel house' (from the same Latin 'carnem' through French) is a vault for dead bodies -- flesh in its most final form. The thread connecting carnival, carnivore, carnal, and charnel is the Latin concept of 'carō' -- living, desiring, consuming, dying flesh. That a word meaning 'remove the meat' should have become the English language's premier word for uninhibited celebration is one of etymology's richer ironies.