[a. F. charivari (14th c. in Littré), Pic. caribari, in med.L. c(h)arivarium, charavaria, etc.; of unknown origin; various conjectures are mentioned by Littré.] A serenade of ‘rough music,’ with kettles, pans, tea-trays, and the like, used in France, in mockery and derision of incongruous or unpopular marriages, and of unpopular persons generally; hence a confused, discordant medley of sounds; a babel of noise.
1735. trans. P. Bayle’s Dict., II. 104. A Charivary, or Mock Music, given to a Woman that was married again immediately after the Death of her Husband.
1848. C. Brontë, Jane Eyre, xvii. (D.). We … played a charivari with the ruler and desk, the fender and fire-irons.
1854. Emerson, Lett. & Soc. Aims, Wks. (Bohn), III. 173. We … are all drawn into the charivari; we chide, lament, cavil, and recriminate.
1863. Kingsley, Water-b., i. Never was heard … such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of dignity and order.
¶ From its original sense, taken as the name of a satirical journal in Paris; in imitation of which
1841. (title) Punch, or the London Charivari.
