CHARADES

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does charades mean? 

• CHARADES (noun)
  The noun CHARADES has 1 sense:

1. guessing game in which one player pantomimes a word or phrase for others to guess

  Familiarity information: CHARADES used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHARADES (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Guessing game in which one player pantomimes a word or phrase for others to guess

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("charades" is a kind of...):

guessing game (a game in which participants compete to identify some obscurely indicated thing)

Meronyms (parts of "charades"):

charade (a word acted out in an episode of the game of charades)

 Context examples 

I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed: they spoke of "playing charades," but in my ignorance I did not understand the term.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Compliments, charades, and horrible blunders; and it was not to be supposed that poor Harriet should not be recollecting too; but she behaved very well, and was only rather pale and silent.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

It is one thing, said she, presently—her cheeks in a glow—to have very good sense in a common way, like every body else, and if there is any thing to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like this.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

She cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then passing it to Harriet, sat happily smiling, and saying to herself, while Harriet was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope and dulness, Very well, Mr. Elton, very well indeed. I have read worse charades.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He was invited to contribute any really good enigmas, charades, or conundrums that he might recollect; and she had the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections; and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the sex should pass his lips.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)