What's the difference between bacchanal and bacchanalian?

Bacchanal


Definition:

  • (a.) Relating to Bacchus or his festival.
  • (a.) Engaged in drunken revels; drunken and riotous or noisy.
  • (n.) A devotee of Bacchus; one who indulges in drunken revels; one who is noisy and riotous when intoxicated; a carouser.
  • (n.) The festival of Bacchus; the bacchanalia.
  • (n.) Drunken revelry; an orgy.
  • (n.) A song or dance in honor of Bacchus.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) What happened during this once-in-a-lifetime bacchanal?
  • (2) Debauchery Stratton Oakmont's profits fund a bacchanal: cars, drugs, women who are exactly as disposable as the cars and drugs, and antics that veer from Jackass territory into hazing rituals.
  • (3) The story ricocheted around blogs and news sites illustrated with images of bare-chested, bikini-clad bacchanals around the Yucatan peninsula.
  • (4) Korine set up fiestas of his own in party hotels where no one had slept in a week, or just affixed his cast and story to bacchanals already long in progress.
  • (5) It’s the start of the trade-show-meets-tropical-bacchanal that is Art Basel Miami Beach .
  • (6) For a DJ who presided over some notorious bacchanals – he first came to prominence in the mid-70s, playing alongside his best friend Larry Levan at New York's infamous Continental Baths, a club with steam rooms, pool and private apartments that one patron described as most closely resembling "an orgy" with added music – and who began his nightclub career as a gopher employed to hand out LSD to dancers at a disco called The Gallery, he could be curiously puritanical.
  • (7) The whole work is crammed and crowded with the Dadd mixture of intricate plant life and small figures on all scales – a miniature bacchanal with satyrs, and a dead deer on a pole that rushes along above Titania's head.

Bacchanalian


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the festival of Bacchus; relating to or given to reveling and drunkenness.
  • (n.) A bacchanal; a drunken reveler.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) News reports and isolated video clips have made Trump’s rallies seem like bacchanalian proto-fascist white power orgies, fuelled by bald racism, pseudo-Nazi salutes and the imminent threat of violence toward any detractors.
  • (2) And Spencer Jones too, as a bacchanalian health and safety officer.
  • (3) Not that I have anything like the same vocal ability, but the more you have that personal connection and people can feel your sincerity… You know, dance music isn’t just escapism; at best it’s always been about including the difficulties and challenges of life rather than just being this utopian, bacchanalian zone.” Ten hours later, as the sun is almost on its way back up, Dan underlines his point by wrapping up his headline DJ set with Cloud One’s plaintive disco stomper Don’t Let My Rainbow Pass Me By (“I’ve waited so long for sunshine… don’t let this chance go by!”).