funfair
A funfair is the British and Irish term for a travelling amusement park — that annual spectacle of flashing lights, rickety rides, candy floss, and overpriced hook-a-duck stalls that rolls into town on a lorry convoy and transforms a car park or common into a pocket-sized carnival.
Definitions
A funfair is the British and Irish term for a travelling amusement park — that annual spectacle of flashing lights, rickety rides, candy floss, and overpriced hook-a-duck stalls that rolls into town on a lorry convoy and transforms a car park or common into a pocket-sized carnival. The word perfectly captures the combination of fun and festivity, and it carries a nostalgic warmth for anyone who spent childhood evenings screaming on the Waltzer or trying to win a goldfish.
The funfair set up on the seafront every August Bank Holiday weekend and the whole town turned out.
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(UK, Ireland) A travelling amusement park.
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🇬🇧About British & Irish slang slang
UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
See all British & Irish slang slang on Slangora.
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- carnival76%
(US) A traveling amusement park, called a funfair in British English.
- fairs65%
Fairs is a clipped British slang version of fair's fair — an appeal to basic fairness or equal treatment. You'd say it when someone's pushing their luck or getting more than their share. Short, punchy, and instantly understood in British English, it doubles as both a mild protest and a reminder that everyone should get a square deal.
- funhouse59%
(originally, US) A structure, usually at a circus or amusement park, enclosing several interactive attractions such as distorting mirrors, ramps, slides, stairs, rotating barrel slides, etc., that usually do not involve performers.
- holiday park59%
An amusement park.