charade
A charade is a game or performance where people act out words or phrases without speaking. It's like a silly guessing game.
In everyday life, when we say someone is acting like a charade, it means they're pretending to be something they're not, often in a way that's hard to figure out. For example, if your friend is being super dramatic about how late they are for work and making up all sorts of excuses, you might say they're putting on a charade. The word can also refer to a performance where people mime words or phrases, like in a comedy show or at a party game night.
How common is "charade"?
It has a balanced usage among all categories: speech, fiction, newspapers and academic texts.
noun
(literature, archaic) A genre of riddles where the clues to the answer are descriptions or puns on its syllables, with a final clue to the whole.
Example: CHARADE, a trifling species of composition, or quasi-literary form of amusement, which may perhaps be best defined as a punning enigma propounded in a series of descriptions. A word is taken of two or more syllables, each forming a distinct word; each of these is described in verse or prose, as aptly and enigmatically as possible; and the same process is applied to the whole word. The neater and briefer the descriptive parts of the problem, the better the charade will be. In selecting words for charades, special attention should be paid to the absolute quality of the syllables composing them, inaccuracy in trifles of this sort depriving them of what little claim to merit they may possess. The brilliant rhythmic trifles of W. Mackworth Praed are well known. Of representative prose charades, the following specimens are perhaps as good as could be selected:—“My first, with the most rooted antipathy to a Frenchman, prides himself, whenever they meet, upon sticking close to his jacket; my second has many virtues, nor is its least that it gives its name to my first; my whole may I never catch!” “My first is company; my second shuns company; my third collects company; and my whole amuses company.” The solutions are Tar-tar and Co-nun-drum.
Real examples of "charade" in context
