An evening party, usually a smart one held in someone's home. Another French borrowing, often written with the accent, soirée. The idea is a gathering in the evening with good clothes, conversation, maybe music or a performance — not dancing all night, and not a big loud party. Think of a hostess inviting thirty people for drinks and a pianist. Because it is a borrowed and slightly grand word, English speakers now use it in two quite different ways. Written seriously, in an invitation or a report of a charity event, it means what it says: a formal evening party. But in ordinary speech it is very often joking — friends will call a small get-together 'our little soiree' precisely because the word is too grand for what they are doing, and the joke is in the gap. You need to hear the tone to know which is meant. It is said roughly 'SWAH-ray'.