Not only do I know the word because I spent some time in the UK, I know some people who have it in the title of their company!
It seems the word is much less common nowadays in the English language countries. In German usage the noun Palaver is pretty well known, pejoratively referring to an unnecessarily protracted conversation about a subject better spoken of concisely or not at all. Curiously enough the German Wikipedia article on the word says German got the word from English.
Oh my, what a kerfuffle. 
I am English, and this is correct. It’s usually used in the phrase “what a palaver” for something involving unnecessary fuss and difficulty. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly obscure here.
Yes I know the word but rarely use it in real life.
It’s in crossword puzzles frequently.
It was in a dialogue from the movie Scent of a Woman. The teenage boy tells Al Pacino, “I attend Baird School.” Al Capino says “Don’t give me that prep school palaver.” It’s not the best movie in the world yet I’ve seen it a couple times.
Never heard the word in my life, and I hung out for years with UKers. Or I should more accurately state: if I had heard or seen it somewhere, it never went beyond my short-term memory. I would not be surprised if I had seen it before and just glossed over it. After all, my degree was in English literature.
Palaver–slang from the Old West. To talk, or gossip.
+1, this is exactly what I thought of. Especially in a usage like “we’d better go palaver with the Apaches so they don’t attack us while we’re passing through their land.” I understood it to mean a quick conversation of the negotiating sort.
I actually used it the other day much to confused looks of the coworkers around me. I can’t say exactly where I’ve heard it used but it sounds like something a character written by Raymond Chandler or Jim Thompson would say. I feel like Robert Mitchum used it repeatedly; maybe in Out of the Past?
Stranger
I learned this word because of French class—there’s something called the ne pléonastique, the “pleonastic ne,” meaning the negative particle is used in a positive sentence for no reason at all. Nobody can explain what it’s doing there, but formal French grammar requires it anyway.
The first time the teacher explained this, my reaction was “You’re kidding, right?”
My brethren…
Count me as another who’s familiar with the use of the word in westerns. That fits in with this definition.
historical
an improvised conference between two groups, typically those without a shared language or culture.
No question that the use of the word has dropped precipitously from 200 years ago, as this Google Ngram shows. There are a couple of bumps mid-twentieth century, which might reflect the popularity of western movies and tv shows sending the word into the language. Pretty much dead in the 21st century, though.
“Windage and elevation, Mrs. Langdon. Windage and elevation.”
Not even an obscure one.
My latest new word which I’ve been using excessively is apricity.
Ooo, that’s a lovely word “apricity.” Up there with “petrichor” for evoking similar feelings
Add me to the people who know it from the Dark Tower books, where it roughly means “an informal but important conversation”.
I think of it as a folksy word that just means “talking”. Often with the connotation of talk that doesn’t go anywhere. As in, “there was a lot of palaver about what to do about the dead porcupine but in the end Dad just dug a hole and buried it.” But it can mean any kind of talking.
I don’t use it because I’m rarely folksy except ironically.
I know the word because I have a very large vocabulary.
Petrichor cost me a buck. When my kids and their cousins were young, I had a standing offer of a buck for anyone who could use a word I did not know. My nephew Tom won a buck on petrichor.