ariot

English

Alternative forms

• a-riot

Etymology

a- (“on, in”) +‎ riot

Adjective

ariot (not comparable)

1. (postpositive) Filled with or involving rioting or riotous behaviour.
   • 1907, Robert W. Service, “The Law of the Yukon” in Songs of a Sourdough, Toronto: William Briggs, p. 8,^[1]

     In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,

     Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;

   • 1935, Robert E. Howard, The Grisly Horror in Weird Tales, February 1935, Chapter 5,^[2]

     It was a red drama of the primitive—destruction amuck and ariot, the primordial embodied in fangs and talons, gone mad and plunging in slaughter.

2. (postpositive) Filled in an unrestrained manner.
   • 1896, Octave Thanet (pseudonym of Alice French, “The Captured Dream” in A Book of True Lovers, Chicago: Way & Williams, 1897, p. 262,^[3]

     […] a white fence glittered in front of an old fashioned garden ariot with scarlet salvias and crimson coxcomb.

   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Penguin, 2012,^[4]

     The rooms seemed to run on for blocks, stuffed with automata human and animal assembled and in pieces, disappearing-cabinets, tables that would float in midair and other trick furniture, Davenport figures with dark-rimmed eyes in sinister faces, lengths of perfect black velvet and multicolored silk brocade a-riot with Oriental scenes […]

Anagrams

• Artio, artoi, atrio-, iatro-, ratio