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1826 C. A. Eaton Continental Adventures III. xliii. 107 The account of the charade acting..seemed to me too improbable to obtain credit from Mr. Lindsay, unsupported by other testimony.

1844 New Monthly Mag. 70 421 Time galloped gaily along..with the charade-players, and the day for which the exhibition was fixed was rapidly approaching.

1845 Tait's Edinb. Mag. Dec. 791/1 No such waltzing as his—no such charade-playing had ever been seen there.

1848 W. M. Thackeray Vanity Fair li. 458 The performers disappeared, to get ready for the second charade-tableau.

1850 C. M. Yonge Henrietta's Wish xii. 173 She explained in a droll manner the distress in which the charade actors stood.

1876 ‘G. Eliot’ Daniel Deronda IV. viii. lxix. 345 Miss Gascoigne let fall something in our talk about charade-acting—for I went through some of my nonsense to please the young ones.

1925 D. H. Lawrence St. Mawr 7 Her quaint air of playing at being well-bred, in a sort of charade game.

1956 Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram 6 July a8/3 ‘Pantomime Quiz’ returns to the network..with a good lineup of charade-playing stars.

1987 E. A. Griffin Making Friends (& Making them Count) i. 22 I've seen charade players wipe off an imaginary chalk board to try to get their teammates to blot out early misconceptions.

2000 B. Southam in F. J. Stafford Jane Austen's Emma (2007) 272 When a ‘ship’ enters the story, it is not one of Britain's ‘wooden walls’ but the answer to a charade clue, ‘the monarch of the seas!’.