a kind of riddle, probably invented in France during the 18th
century, in which a word of two or more syllables is divined by guessing
and combining into one word (the answer) the different syllables, each
of which is described, as an independent word, by the giver of the
charade. Charades may be either in prose or verse. Of poetic charades
those by W. Mackworth Praed are well known and excellent examples, while
the following specimens in prose may suffice as illustrations. "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_. The most popular form of
this amusement is the acted charade, in which the meaning of the
different syllables is acted out on the stage, the audience being left
to guess each syllable and thus, combining the meaning of all the
syllables, the whole word. A brilliant example of the acted charade is
described in Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_.

CHARCOAL, the blackish residue consisting of impure carbon obtained by
removing the volatile constituents of animal and vegetable substances;
wood gives origin to wood-charcoal; sugar to sugar-charcoal; bone to
bone-charcoal (which, however, mainly consists of calcium phosphate);
while coal gives "coke" and "gas-carbon." The first part of the word
charcoal is of obscure origin. The independent use of "char," meaning to
scorch, to reduce to carbon, is comparatively recent, and must have been
taken from "charcoal," which is quite early. The _New English
Dictionary_ gives as the earliest instance of "char" a quotation dated
1679. Similarly the word "chark" or "chak," meaning the same as "char,"
is also late, and is probably due to a wrong division of the word
"charcoal," or, as it was often spelled in the 16th and 17th centuries,
"charkole" and "charke-coal." No suggestions for an origin of "char" are
satisfactory. It may be a use of the word "chare," which appears in
"char-woman," the American "chore"; in all these words it means "turn,"
a turn of work, a job, and "charcoal" would have to mean "turned coal,"
i.e. wood changed or turned to coal, a somewhat forced derivation, for
which there is no authority. Another sugg