shivaree: a serenade of "mock music" created by banging on pots and pans or similar items

The word is a corruption of the French charivari. Its origin is unknown, but it was in use as early as the fourteenth century. Shivarees probably started in the French settlement of Louisiana, but they were soon popular throughout the nineteenth-century West. Their cacaphonous racket was most often heard outside the windows of newly married couples, especially couples of whom the crowd disapproved - for instance, recent widows and their new husbands. Of course, once English-speaking Americans adopted the term, it soon became a verb, and people talked about shivareeing various friends and enemies. A similar word in use at the time was callithumpian.