CHARABANC/ˈʃærəbæŋ/
An early form of bus, used typically for sightseeing trips.
The original was French, char-à-bancs, a carriage with benches, so called because the original horse-drawn charabancs in France had rows of crosswise seats looking forward. In that spelling it has been known in English at least since Lord Byron mentioned it in his journal in September 1816, though within ten years it had been Anglicised as charabanc (so foreign, these accents). British speakers usually said it as sharra-bang when they didn’t abbreviate it to sharra (written chara).
The conveyance may be long
gone, but its name can still
occasionally be found on old
road signs, as here at
Wookey Hole in Somerset.
The heyday of the charabanc in Britain was between the First and Second World Wars, when it had been motorised but not yet fitted with any very effective shelter from the weather. Sometimes it was graced with a roof over the passenger seats but its sides remained open to the elements. It was a conveyance mainly for the holidaymaking proletariat, who were disparagingly referred to by their social superiors as trippers. To such critics, the charabanc wasn’t so much a vehicle as a noisy self-propelled pub that conveyed a drunken rabble who threw bottles and bellowed bawdy songs. This was a huge exaggeration, of course, since most charabanc excursions were sober.
H G Wells made plain his disdain for the occupants of such vehicles in his story The New Accelerator of 1903: “He gripped my arm and, walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot, went shouting with me up the hill. A whole char-à-banc-ful of people turned and stared at us in unison after the manner of people in chars-à-banc.”
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Last updated 17 Jun 2006
