charade
Americannoun
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charades
plural
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(used with a singular verb) charades, a game in which the players are typically divided into two teams, members of which take turns at acting out in pantomime a word, phrase, title, etc., which the members of their own team must guess.
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a word or phrase acted out in this game.
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a blatant pretense or deception, especially something so full of pretense as to be a travesty.
noun
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an episode or act in the game of charades
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an absurd act; travesty
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of charade
1770–80; < French < Provençal charrad ( o ) entertainment, equivalent to charr ( á ) to chat, chatter (from imitative root) + -ado -ade 1
Explanation
A charade is something done just for show. Your devotion to vegetarianism would be a charade if you actually ate cheeseburgers when no one was looking. When you want things to appear different than they really are, you might be tempted to put on a charade, like a charade of happiness when you are really feeling down. Charade is also the name for a silently-acted clue in the game called Charades — which originally wasn't silent. It used indirect descriptions of the words.
Vocabulary lists containing charade
"The Stolen Party"
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Glitch
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The Tower of Nero
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Chaminade student Pablo Suarez pulled off the charade of the year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2026
The charade will help Stewart close a business deal and make him the favored Whitfield to take over the family’s real-estate empire.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Why force myself to go through with this charade again?
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 27, 2025
The decision on how to proceed now rests with Macron, who must surely be asking himself how long this political charade can be allowed to go on.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2025
Prince Hamlet joined the charade, tugging upon the jester until he rebounded like a tennis ball and jumped upon the king’s table, where he commenced singing.
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
Instead, they take turns to silently perform a series of moves and poses that look, to the untrained eye, as if they are playing charades or, as they writhe on the ground, breakdancing.
From Barron's ● Aug. 22, 2026
In playing charades with our friends, for example, we aim to prevail, but only in fun.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
"We divided attendees into groom and bride's teams and organised games like charades and guessing who the relative is from a stereotype," said CEO Anurag Pandey.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2025
Hitler ran a regime that engaged in elaborate charades to bamboozle sympathetic and influential foreigners about the nature of the Nazi state.
From Salon ● Sep. 21, 2024
She tried and quickly abandoned trying to teach them how to play charades; they were simply no good at guessing the names of famous people, since they had never heard of any of them.
From "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling" by Maryrose Wood
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
