I knew that carnival derives from the Italian carnevale and I had always assumed that that word simply amalgamated the words for meat and goodbye. Makes perfect sense, no? It may make sense but that is not the origin. The word in old Italian was carnelevare, which means the lifting or the withdrawal of meat and changed, possibly under the influence of vale, to the current word.
Pointless, mundane, but always nice to learn something new.
I’ve always thought that I’m a smartass for knowing that “carnival= goodbye meat”, but now I can be even be a *bigger *smartass by correcting other, inferior smartasses with my new knowledge! Thanks to Hari, thanks to the Dope! 
There is a very old-fashioned word for “carnival” in Spanish: “carnestolendas”, which comes straight from Latin and means exactly that: “the taking away of meat” (Latin verb “tollere”, meaning “to take away”, in the gerundive “tollendus”, which means “that which is to be taken away”).
But what does an outdoor festival have to do with meat in the first place?
It’s the last day to eat meat before Lent… so let’s have a party!
It’s akin to Mardis Gras “Fat Tuesday”. Last chance to pig out before Ash Wednesday. But like Mardis Gras it is actually the period before Lent and not a single day. You can’t expect people to prep for ~40 days of fasting and such in just one day, do you?
It’s a very spiritual thing. :rolleyes:
The original meaning of carnaval is the week before Lent and its celebrations (finishing up all those semi-preserves which would start going bad otherwise), what most of y’all call “Mardi Gras” (whose own original and literal meaning is “Fat Tuesday”, the tuesday right before Ash Wednesday); Tuesday is the biggest day of carnaval because it’s the last chance within the last chance. From there, it moved to the meaning of “outdoor festival with music, shows and food”.