Satanalia

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English[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

Blend of Satan +‎ Saturnalia

Proper noun[edit]

Satanalia

  1. Synonym of Saturnalia, emphasizing the immorality of the celebration.
    • 1843, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes: Being a Description of Egypt, page 270:
      [] until a complaint was made to the government, the licentiousness of these Satanalia was so gross, that it would have shocked a Greek audience, though accustomed to the plays of Aristophanes.
    • 1847, John Wilson, The Lands of the Bible Visited and Described - Volume 2, page 473:
      This whole fraud, and these riotous Saturnalia, —I should rather say downright Satanalia, —approved as they are by the body of the Greek ecclesiastics at Jerusalem, ought to exclude those who have the control and management of them from Protestant approbation and ecclesiastical intercommunion.
    • 1871, Thomas Hood, The Works of Thomas Hood, page 321:
      It amused me to picture the consternation of the Friends, could they have peeped in at the Black Saturnalia; or, as they would have called it, Satanalia, in Barbadoes or Jamaica;
    • 1914 September, Tamotsu Iwado, “Home-Made Letters from Japan”, in Japan, number 47, page 28:
      We, children of earth, observe a satanalia of the early autumn in honor of the harvest-moon.
    • 2012, Cyril Smith, Arbutus, page 407:
      He did not pay too much attention to the reasons for the shops being unusually busy, although he had been told by Apulius that most people were now in the throes of preparation for the festival of Satanalia.

Etymology 2[edit]

Satan +‎ -alia

Noun[edit]

Satanalia (uncountable)

  1. Evidence of Satanic activity.
    • 1974, “Demon Phenom”, in The Lutheran Witness, volume 93, page 4:
      By this time you probably have your own private The Exorcist experience story to add to a lengthening collection of "satanalia '74."
    • 1991, Robert D. Hicks, In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult, page 33:
      Now cult cops appear everywhere: officers attend a few cult seminars, return to their departments, and organize portfolios of Satanalia so that they themselves can give seminars to teachers, parents, and enforcers;