How to Use carnivalesque in a Sentence

carnivalesque

adjective
  • His delight in all things carnal and carnivalesque flows as freely as ever.
    — Justin Chang, chicagotribune.com, 27 July 2017
  • Most of the time, there was a warm, carnivalesque atmosphere, but a crowd’s mood can also change at the speed of light.
    — Laura Cappelle, New York Times, 9 Mar. 2023
  • Their world seems like our own but then, when a dormouse is offered as a snack, becomes almost carnivalesque.
    — James Romm, WSJ, 12 Mar. 2021
  • The atmosphere, for a while, was carnivalesque.
    — Jazz Monroe, Pitchfork, 6 Apr. 2026
  • The result is part carnivalesque caricature and part generic smiley face.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2023
  • Their great bar food delights includes an array of ‘cheezy’ vegan options, and topped off with colorful and carnivalesque cocktails.
    — Jessica Chapel, Condé Nast Traveler, 25 Aug. 2023
  • But in its political culture the corruption was inescapable, and, like the city itself, carnivalesque.
    — James Verini, New Yorker, 2 Mar. 2026
  • Piccioli used watercolors to paint, in his signature pink, a carnivalesque mask over Dalí’s face.
    — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Participants take over city streets for a carnivalesque monthly ride, contesting cars’ dominance.
    — Livia Gershon, JSTOR Daily, 5 Mar. 2026
  • Surely even medieval peasants sometimes stared into the middle distance and sighed over their barley pottage, longing for the next village fête day and a bit of carnivalesque mayhem.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 20 Aug. 2020
  • Cairo is a place of carnivalesque crowds but also the utter stasis of cafés, where the unemployed and redundant intellectuals loiter.
    — Ange Mlinko, The New York Review of Books, 1 Dec. 2022
  • Presented using carnivalesque imagery, its middle panel is a self-portrait that conveys the artist’s guilt about teaching within a system that buries students in debt.
    — Troy Reimink, Detroit Free Press, 17 Sep. 2017
  • With his bullying serve, haymaker forehand and knack for carnivalesque shots, Kyrgios is wildly entertaining to watch.
    — Michael Steinberger, New York Times, 25 Aug. 2016
  • As usual for Bong, unexpected music choices liven things up, from quirky waltzes to carnivalesque riffs in a Danny Elfman mode.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Feb. 2025
  • In one instance, the permeation of real and carnivalesque, true and false, amateur and professional in Avignon reduced me to rubble.
    — Helen Shaw, The New Yorker, 25 July 2024
  • Oh, and who can forget the balloons, birthday cake, a bounce house, live music, Folklorico Dancers and story time at this carnivalesque gathering fit for an entire state.
    — The Denver Channel, The Know, 1 Aug. 2019
  • But fans from the other 28 countries, such as Axel, have stayed on long after their team’s defeat, to soak up the carnivalesque atmosphere and maximize time with newfound loves.
    — Amie Ferris-Rotman, Washington Post, 9 July 2018
  • In the moments after a president gives the State of the Union, Statuary Hall becomes a carnivalesque madhouse.
    — Nash Jenkins, Time, 31 Jan. 2018
  • Eisenman has lately funneled much of her perversity into raucous sculptures that answer exactly to the tenor of our ghoulish, carnivalesque politics.
    — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 19 Aug. 2020
  • Capping weeks of nationwide strikes, protests and carnivalesque street parties, parliament voted 59 to 42 in favor of Pashinyan.
    — Washington Post, 12 May 2018
  • His reporting causes thousands of people to gather at the mountain Minosa is buried under, creating a carnivalesque atmosphere.
    — Steve Larkin, The Week, 1 Apr. 2022
  • During the town’s carnivalesque Battle of the Flowers, Her Majesty much enjoyed pelting the masquerading crowd from the balcony of her hotel.
    — Jonathan Miles, Town & Country, 5 Sep. 2023
  • Soccer nationalism has become largely carnivalesque— a giant costume party, a jokey, theatrical form of chauvinism.
    — Ian Buruma, New Yorker, 23 Feb. 2026
  • The result is a group of carnivalesque monsters clustered, bizarre and monumental, in an otherwise typically Tuscan landscape.
    — Lauren Elkin, Travel + Leisure, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Ally’s sightings of gruesome clowns around town—a reference to the rash of creepy carnivalesque encounters around North America last year—provides one of the big political metaphors of the show.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 6 Sep. 2017
  • The film’s centerpiece is a chaotic, carnivalesque parade of surrealistic characters marching through Tokyo.
    — Eric Vilas-Boas, Vulture, 31 Oct. 2025
  • Capping weeks of nationwide strikes, protests, and carnivalesque street parties, Parliament voted 59 to 42 in favor of Pashinyan.
    — Washington Post, BostonGlobe.com, 8 May 2018
  • In Trinidad, which has a sizable population of Indian-origin immigrants, there is a local carnivalesque form of the holiday called Hosay.
    — Charles Preston, Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 May 2026
  • Children, groups of friends, couples, and elderly people perch on the moon’s hook, beaming into the camera, acting out a carnivalesque prefiguration of the events of 1969.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 10 July 2019
  • Another image, taken during the Hudson Valley wave of the mid-eighties, reportedly by a state trooper, shows an arc of lights in a carnivalesque array of colors, hanging in the night sky.
    — Chris Wiley, The New Yorker, 3 Aug. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'carnivalesque.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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