English

Alternative forms

• infair (19th century)

Noun

infare ‎(plural infares)

1. (Scotland, US) A party or other celebration held to mark someone's entrance into a new home, especially the arrival of a bride at her new home; a wedding reception.
   • 1834, David Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of, Nebraska 1987, p. 64:

     At our next meeting we set the day for our wedding; and I went to my father's, and made arrangements for an infair, and returned to ask her parents for her.

   • 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska 2005, p. 11:

     He stretched his arms above his head and drew a long sigh of pleasurable reminiscence. “We hed a right sorter sociable evenin'. I'll be bound they air all over yander at the infair now.”

   • 1910, Corra Harria, A Circuit Rider's Wife, Digitized edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2007:

     The older women spread the viands for the "infare," as the wedding dinner was called, upon the table, and we stood about it to eat amid shouts and laughter and an exchange of wit as good natured as it was horrifying to bridal ears.

   • 1913, Martha McCulloch Williams, Dishes & Beverages of the Old South, Digitized edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2009:

     Maybe I had better explain that infare meant the bride's going home--to her new house, … Wherever held, it was an occasion of keen and jealous rivalry--those in charge being doubly bent on making the faring in more splendid than the wedding feast.

   • 1941, Slave Narratives, Volume IV, Digitized edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2006:

     Again Laney interrupted her husband. "My mother said they even had infare dinners the next day after the wedding. The infare dinners were just for the families of the bride and groom, and the bride had a special dress for that occasion that she called her infare dress. The friends of both parties were there at the big feast on the wedding day, but not at the infare dinner."

   • 1995, W. K. McNeil, Ozark Country:

     Today, most weddings are followed by some sort of celebration, although not by infares, shivarees, or any similar institution.

   • 2000, Robert Morgan, The Mountains Won't Remember Us and Other Stories:

     She'd show me her doll, and talk about play-parties she'd been to, infares and dances.

   • 2007, Ted Olson, Kathy H. Olson, James Still:

     The musterings, auctions, infares, feuds, and frolics are here, the holdup, the war whoop, eagle oratory, revival shouts, hard work and hard times, and every aspect of pioneer morality from the bashful lover at the bean pot to the camp-meeting baby.

   • 2011, Howard Fast, The American:

     In the past, drinking had been a thing for parties, or infares as they called them locally, or something before dinner to whet one's taste.

References

• infare in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Anagrams

• naifer