Carnevale and its Latin forms are attested from the medieval period for the pre-Lenten season, with the meat-removal derivation standard. English carnival is recorded from the sixteenth century. The alternate parsing carne vale, farewell to meat, circulates alongside carnem levare in the handbooks.
The folk telling makes carnival a single medieval invention, a pressure valve designed by the Church. The documented record is messier: pre-Lenten feasting absorbed older winter festivals locally, varying city to city, and the Church spent centuries alternately licensing and condemning it.
Anthropologists of the Bakhtin school read carnival as the world turned upside down, masks dissolving rank for a day, and note the word itself performs the trick: a term of religious subtraction became the global brand of indulgence.
The biggest party words in the world, carnival, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, are all named for the diet that starts tomorrow. Is celebration always just the shadow of a rule?