charade
Pronunciation: /ʃəˈɹɑːd/
The English word “charade” has 6 meanings listed here.
noun
- A genre of riddles where the clues to the answer are descriptions or puns on its syllables, with a final clue to the whole.
- A single round of the game charades, an acted form of the earlier riddles.
- A play resembling the game charades, particularly due to poor acting.
- A deception or pretense, originally an absurdly obvious one but now in general use.
- A form of wordplay where several words are placed together to form a new word or part thereof.
verb
Etymology
From French charade, charrade (“prattle, idle conversation; a kind of riddle”), probably from Occitan charrada (“conversation; chatter”), from charrar (“to chat; to chatter”) + -ada. As a round of the game, originally a clipping of acting charade but now usually understood and formed as a back-formation from charades.
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.