carousing

American

[kuh-rou-zing] / kəˈraʊ zɪŋ /

noun

the act or habit of engaging in drunken revelry.

I’ve been having a slow morning mentally—maybe from all that carousing at the pub last night.

adjective

engaging in drunken revelry.

He joked about a family wedding he had attended over the weekend, and some of the carousing relatives he’d seen there.

Other Word Forms

carousingly adverb
uncarousing adjective

Etymology

Origin of carousing

First recorded in 1580–90; carouse ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. ) for the noun; carouse ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. ) for the adjective

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Packed bars with carousing revelers spilling onto clogged streets.

From New York Times • May 9, 2024

His songs blended the scabrous and the sentimental, ranging from carousing anthems to snapshots of life in the gutter to unexpectedly tender love songs.

From Washington Times • Nov. 30, 2023

No Seattle cops were anywhere to be seen either, so on that day the crowd lying and carousing on the sidewalk swelled so large that pedestrians had to cross the street to go around.

From Seattle Times • Aug. 30, 2023

The camera jogs along with Ken as he holds back snot and tears, doing his best not to alarm the carousing guests.

From Salon • Apr. 10, 2023

Mollie and others began to harbor suspicions about Anna’s ex-husband, Oda Brown, who called himself a businessman but spent most of his time carousing.

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023