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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.
Examples of carouse in a Sentence
Laurie Gwen Shapiro, New Yorker, 2 June 2025
In late March, a few hundred people descended on the Mall at Bay Plaza in the Bronx with young-looking shoppers carousing and running through the complex, based on a TikTok video.
—Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 28 May 2025
After all that carousing, Chalamet, 29, managed to show up all smiles on race day on Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in MiamI Gardens.
—Madeleine Marr, Miami Herald, 5 May 2025
Some allegedly caroused until dawn.
—Matthew Adams, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 19 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for carouse
Cite this Entry
“Carouse.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/carouse. Accessed 15 Jun. 2025.
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