canaille

Borrowed from Middle French canaille.

• IPA^(key): /kəˈnaɪ/, /kəˈneɪl/

canaille (countable and uncountable, plural canailles)

1. (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.

2. (uncountable, Canada) Shorts or inferior flour.

• “canaille”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• Alliance, alliance, ancillae

• kanalje (archaic, superseded)

Borrowed from Middle French canaille, from Italian canaglia. From the sixteenth century onwards.

• IPA^(key): /ˌkaːˈnɑ.jə/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ca‧nail‧le

canaille n (plural canailles)

1. (uncountable) plebs, scum, riffraff
2. (countable) rascal, jerk, scumbag

• → Sranan Tongo: kanari
• → West Frisian: kanalje

Inherited from Middle French canaille, from Italian canaglia.

• IPA^(key): /ka.naj/ ~ /ka.nɑj/

• Audio:

  (file)

canaille f (plural canailles)

1. (archaic) rabble (collectively)
2. rascal, blackguard, scoundrel, scum

• encanaillement
• encanailler

• → Danish: kanalje
• → English: canaille
• → Esperanto: kanajlo
• → Finnish: kanalja
• → German: Canaille
• Haitian Creole: kannay

• “canaille”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

• alliance