goliardery

Etymology

From Goliard + -ery.

goliardery means The satirical or ribald poetry of the Goliards. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.

Why this word is great

GOLIARDERY — [Noun] The corpus of satirical, irreverent, and ribald poetry and song produced by the Goliards, medieval wandering scholars and clerics. Its lineage is fittingly ribald: from the Old French *goliart*, a drunkard or glutton, appended with the suffix -ery to denote their peculiar practice. Unlike "satire" (which casts a wide, timeless net) or "bacchanalia" (which names the debauch itself), goliardery is the specific, inky residue of clerical rebellion—the scholarly jest scrawled in a cathedral's shadow. It is the sound of a Latin hymn twisted into a drinking song, the scent of cheap wine on a breviary’s pages, and the image of a tonsured head thrown back in laughter at a cosmic joke. It is the brief, human crackle of warmth against the vast, cold stone of dogma.

noun

The satirical or ribald poetry of the Goliards.“The Goliards became a kind of monkish rhapsodists , the companions and rivals of the Jongleurs ( the reciters of the merry and licentious fabliaux ) ; Goliardery was a recognised kind of mediæval poetry”