[Fr.; f. fête (see FÊTE sb.) + champêtre rural:—L. campestrem, f. campus a field.] An outdoor entertainment, a rural festival.
1774. H. Walpole, Lett. H. Mann (1857), VI. 88. He gives her a most splendid entertainment to-morrow at his villa in Surrey, and calls it a fête champêtre.
1800. Mar. Edgeworth, Belinda, xi. The baronet thought it incumbent upon him to eclipse his rival in conversation, and he began to talk of the last fête champêtre at Frogmore.
1884. S. Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, III. 281. In the period of our advance in material prosperity by leaps and bounds, amusements in England were carried to an excess they never before had attained. The battue system developed into the sort of fête champêtre, with hot lunch, champagne, and liveried attendants, ridiculed to our amusement on the stage, and pigeon-shooting became that ‘tournament of doves’ it was termed in a fashionable novel of the day.
