A large open-air bus or motorcoach with bench seating, used for excursions and sightseeing, especially popular in early 20th-century Britain.
From French char-à-bancs, literally 'carriage with benches' (char = carriage, à = with, bancs = benches). Borrowed into English during the motor-coach tourism era of the 1900s-1920s.
The charabanc was the Instagram of the 1920s—families piled into open buses wearing their finest clothes for a day trip to the seaside or countryside, and postcards of charabancs became popular souvenirs of social freedom.
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