canaille
See also: Canaille
English
editEtymology
editBorrowed from Middle French canaille.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editcanaille (countable and uncountable, plural canailles)
- (countable, collective) The lowest class of people; the rabble; the vulgar.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:commonalty
- 1553, Ambroise Paré, “The Journey to Hesdin”, in Journeys In Diverse Places:
- I was on a rampart watching the enemy pitch their camp; and, seeing the crowd of idlers round the stream, I asked M. du Pont, commissary of the artillery, to send one cannon-shot among this canaille: he gave me a flat refusal, saying that all this sort of people was not worth the powder would be wasted on them.
- 1865, John Ruskin, "Of Kings' Treasuries", Unto This Last and Other Writings, Penguin: New York (1997), p. 262
- [...] whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille; [...]
- 1937, P. G. Wodehouse, Lord Emsworth and Others, Woodstock: Overlook, published 2002, pages 99–100:
- The President's Cup, for all its high-sounding name, was one of the lowliest and most humble trophies offered for competition to the members of our club... It had been instituted by a kindly committee for the benefit of the canaille of our little golfing world, those retired military, naval and business men who withdraw to the country and take up golf in their fifties.
- (uncountable, Canada) Shorts or inferior flour.
References
edit- “canaille”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
Anagrams
editDutch
editAlternative forms
edit- kanalje (archaic, superseded)
Etymology
editBorrowed from Middle French canaille, from Italian canaglia. From the sixteenth century onwards.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editcanaille n (plural canailles)
Descendants
editFrench
editEtymology
editInherited from Middle French canaille, from Italian canaglia.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editcanaille f (plural canailles)
Derived terms
editDescendants
edit- → Danish: kanalje
- → English: canaille
- → Esperanto: kanajlo
- → Finnish: kanalja
- → German: Canaille
- Haitian Creole: kannay
Further reading
edit- “canaille”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
editCategories:
- English terms borrowed from Middle French
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English collective nouns
- English terms with quotations
- Canadian English
- Dutch terms borrowed from Middle French
- Dutch terms derived from Middle French
- Dutch terms derived from Italian
- Dutch terms with IPA pronunciation
- Dutch terms with audio pronunciation
- Dutch lemmas
- Dutch nouns
- Dutch nouns with plural in -s
- Dutch neuter nouns
- Dutch uncountable nouns
- Dutch countable nouns
- French terms inherited from Middle French
- French terms derived from Middle French
- French terms derived from Italian
- French 2-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French feminine nouns
- French terms with archaic senses
- fr:People