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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
Madeleine Marr, Miami Herald, 5 May 2025
Some allegedly caroused until dawn.
—Matthew Adams, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 19 Mar. 2025
From there, a series of scenes — a late-night house party full of adults drinking and carousing, a cascade of tinsel falling off a Christmas tree, a playground fail — replicate a you-are-there feeling as a preadolescent named Elwood Curtis navigates the agonies and ecstasies of boyhood.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 12 Dec. 2024
Serving guests, some of them still carousing from the previous evening out, was never enough.
—Michael Barnes, Austin American-Statesman, 19 July 2024
See All Example Sentences for carouse
Cite this Entry
“Carouse.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/carouse. Accessed 25 May. 2025.
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