saturnalia

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saturnalia

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From Latin Sāturnālia, a festival of the winter solstice.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌsætəˈneɪli.ə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌsætɚˈneɪli.ə/, /ˌsætɚˈneɪljə/

• Audio (US):

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saturnalia (plural saturnalias)

1. A period or occasion of general license, in which the passions or vices have riotous indulgence; a period of unrestrained revelry.
   • 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter LXX, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 260:

     a man who mounts the Hustings, must not allow himself to be sore-boned, or he invites his opponents to 'touch him on the raw,' not in the exercise of their malice, but their power; an election is a saturnalia."

   • 1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXVI, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1906 February 26, →OCLC:

     They lodged men and women on the same floor; and with the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery—scenes such as never before had been witnessed in America.

   • 1922, James Frazer, chapter 14, in The Golden Bough:

     If at the birth of the Latin kings their fathers were really unknown, the fact points either to a general looseness of life in the royal family or to a special relaxation of moral rules on certain occasions, when men and women reverted for a season to the licence of an earlier age. Such Saturnalias are not uncommon at some stages of social evolution.

   • 1922, Rafael Sabatini, chapter XXVIII, in Captain Blood: His Odyssy:

     Yet if he remained, it would simply mean that his own and Hagthorpe's crews would join in the saturnalia and increase the hideousness of events now inevitable.

   • 1961, Joseph Heller, chapter 34, in Catch-22:

     It was a raw, violent, guzzling saturnalia that spilled obstreperously through the woods to the officers' club and spread up into the hills toward the hospital and the antiaircraft-gun emplacements.

   • 2001, Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys:

     We advanced into the main hall, already aroar with a saturnalia of sozzled gestures and gibbering.

• Saturn
• saturnalian
• saturnian

• bacchanalia
• dionysia
• satyrism

• Australian

From Latin Sāturnālia.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɑturnɑliɑ/, [ˈs̠ɑ̝t̪urˌnɑ̝liɑ̝]
• Rhymes: -ɑliɑ
• Hyphenation^(key): sa‧tur‧na‧lia

saturnalia

1. saturnalia