reveller

Reveller is a word that peaked in English currency in the 1820s. It was an Anglo-Norman borrowed from French reveler meaning ‘to engage in wild and noisy merrymaking’. That in turn was related to the Latin rebellare to revolt, rebel.

The Wife of Bath commented that her husband was a revelour, and went on to explain that he had a paramour. This is the first citation given in the OED and is dated 1405.

 The evidence of Google Ngram is that the peak periods for parties and revellers are the 1820s, the late 1890s and the 1920s.  Presumably the flappers were revellers.  After 1940 revelling nosedives.   I suppose that after that we came up with words like partygoing and raging for the manifestations of merriment, and partygoers and ragers made reveller sound rather quaint. In the Macquarie Thesaurus it is linked with frolicker and larker.  Google Ngram confirms that partygoer appeared in the 1940s and climbed  steeply in currency from that point on.

 And yet in our newspaper jargon it survives as the term for someone going to a nightclub or a music festival (and possibly taking illegal drugs).  It is strange how there are some words that appear in the media even though they have no existence in other discourses. I noticed one ABC article that talked about festival attendees but really attendee sounds so tame!  The clash between the quaintness of reveller and the seriousness of the discussion on pill testing catches the ear.