Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Shrove Tuesday, celebrated as a holiday in many places with carnivals, masquerade balls, and parades of costumed merrymakers.
- n. A carnival period coming to a climax on this day.
- n. An occasion of great festivity and merrymaking.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Shrove Tuesday; the last day of carnival; the day before Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), which in some places, as in New Orleans, is celebrated with revelry and elaborate display.
Wiktionary
- n. The day, also known as Shrove Tuesday, when traditionally all fat and meat in the house were finished up, before Christians were banned from eating them during Lent, which commenced the following day on Ash Wednesday.
- n. The last day of a carnival, traditionally the celebration immediately before the start of Lent when joy would be out of place for Christians.
- n. A carnival.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The last day of Carnival; the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent and fasting); Shrove Tuesday; -- in some cities a great day of carnival and merrymaking; in the United States it is especially associated with New Orleans.
- n. The series of festival events celebrated on Mardi Gras{1}.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a carnival held in some countries on Shrove Tuesday (the last day before Lent) but especially in New Orleans
- n. the last day before Lent
Etymologies
- Borrowing from French mardi gras. (Wiktionary)
- French : mardi, Tuesday + gras, fat (from the feasting on Mardi Gras before Lenten fasting). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Now, both under the influence of drops, V'lu had wandered off to view Pan, while Madame rested in the eye of the hurricane, hallucinating about Jesus, Wally Lester, a Mardi Gras baby, gris-gris, zombie butter, and the way things used to be.”
“It slid through the slot with an appropriately soft sound, like a headachey matron folding her Mardi Gras fan.”
“Priscilla was a Mardi Gras baby, " Lily said, out of the blue.”
“There were in the French Quarter, after all, gay men who wore dog collars and were led around on leashes by their lovers, there were heavily tattooed women who draped themselves with snakes, Dixie mystics who sewed their eyelids shut and would tell your fortune for a beignet, and people who wore their Mardi Gras costumes three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.”
“His business partner was a black bondsman named Little Albert Babineau who had recently made the state news wires after he threw packages of condoms off a Mardi Gras float.”
“A Particle instrumental from their album "Launchpad" played by Phil Lesh and Friends at their Mardi Gras concert in 2005.”
“We were climbing into the Schignano valley, where the locals held a kind of Mardi Gras celebration in early March, a carnevale famous throughout northern Italy for the elaborate wooden masks that the Schignanese designed and wore.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Mardi Gras’.
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Nawlins
Words of New Orleans and Louisana.
jeet, Yat, jazz, krewe, NOLA, camelback, muffuletta, Fat Tuesday, Ramos gin fizz, Mardi Gras, cush-cush, faubourg and 20 more...
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Everyone Loves a Parade
junkanoo, charivari, shivaree, cavalcade, autocade, procession, flypast, parade of horribles, flower, ticker tape parade, pride, pomp and 12 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for Mardi Gras.
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