noun

• Any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent.
• A festive occasion marked by parades and sometimes special foods and other entertainment.
• (US) A traveling amusement park, called a funfair in British English.
• (sociology) A context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given temporary license. Derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.
• The season just before the beginning of the Western Christian season of Lent.
• Alternative form of carnival; especially in the sense "any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent." [Any of a number of festivals held just before the beginning of Lent.]