Lupercalia
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Lupercalia
Latin, from Lupercālis belonging to Lupercus, a Roman god of the flocks
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Historians believe that Valentine's Day is rooted in the Roman love and fertility festival, Lupercalia, and was a move by Gelasius I to Christianise pagan traditions.
From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2025
Lewis also shared with Fox News the story of the pagan celebration Lupercalia.
From Fox News ● Feb. 14, 2020
Jordan Barbour’s Mark Antony, first discovered with the Lupercalia ravers, remains a cipher.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2019
The holiday itself dates back many centuries before then; it is apparently another pagan holiday that Christians attempted to co-opt, by transforming the Roman fertility celebration Lupercalia into St. Valentine’s Day.
From Slate ● Feb. 14, 2019
It has long been clear to me that any attempt to explain the details of the Lupercalia on a single hypothesis must be a failure.
From The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus by Fowler, W. Warde
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
