Camelot
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative form of camlet. alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable
- 1 A mythical location in England. The stronghold of King Arthur in the Arthurian legend.
- 2 The administration and surrounding mystique of President John F. Kennedy. US
"Of course you want to fund all these programs, and you want to fund all these activist campaigns. Of course you want that. The term “Camelot” was never used, but there was a Camelot feeling to it at the time that people must have felt in the early ’60s in the same way."
Example
More examples"In 1960, Goulet achieved stardom for his role in the Lerner and Loewe musical "Camelot", where he starred alongside Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as Queen Guenevere. Goulet played a French knight, Sir Lancelot, who falls in love with Guenevere. His role in "The Happy Time" earned Goulet the 1968 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. In 1993, Goulet appeared in a Broadway revival of "Camelot," that time in the role of King Arthur."
Etymology
First attested in Old French as Camaalot in Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. In the US politics sense a reference to the contemporary musical Camelot (1960), associated with the Kennedy era.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.