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Sixteenth-century English revelers toasting each other's health sometimes drank a brimming mug of booze straight to the bottom—drinking an "all-out," they called it. German tipplers did the same and used the German expression for "all out"—gar aus. The French adopted the German term as carous, using the adverb in their expression boire carous ("to drink all out"). That phrase, with its idiomatic sense of "to empty the cup," led to carrousse, a French noun meaning "a large draft of liquor." And that's where English speakers picked up carouse in the 1500s, using it first as a direct borrowing of the French noun, which later took on the sense of a general "drunken revel," and then as a verb meaning "to drink freely." The verb later developed the "rowdy partying" use familiar to us today.
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Examples of carouse in a Sentence
Michael Barnes, Austin American-Statesman, 19 July 2024
While more of a household name in Great Britain, Wakeman’s ethereal-sorcerer persona onstage was matched in his heyday for barroom carousing and insolvency.
—Jordan Hoffman, Vulture, 10 Oct. 2024
Befitting the times, the album sessions were reportedly carousing affairs.
—David Browne, Rolling Stone, 14 Aug. 2024
Many of them had been carousing in Times Square only hours earlier.
—Leah Asmelash, CNN, 2 July 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Carouse.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/carouse. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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