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
Mohammadi's husband, Taghi Rahmani, said she offered no defence while in court due to her "steadfast" belief that "this judiciary holds no legitimacy" and that the proceedings were "a mere charade with a pre-determined end".
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2026
But ProPublica found that those claims were a charade: Lifesaving programs remained on the books, but the flow of money didn’t restart for months, if at all.
From Salon ● Dec. 16, 2025
Why force myself to go through with this charade again?
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 27, 2025
“I’ll have to leave if this tacky charade continues.”
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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
Over five hours, the families competed in 12 events spanning from Jenga to charades.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 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
Writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh had the honors Sunday, and she gamely followed the script’s instructions as though presiding over an evening of charades that an oracle had dreamed up in advance.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2025
Then we played a bunch of cheesy party games like charades and Monopoly.
From "The Battle of the Labyrinth" by Rick Riordan
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.
