cancan

English

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cancan

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• can-can

Etymology

Borrowed from French cancan.

Noun

cancan (plural cancans)

1. A high-kicking chorus line dance originating in France.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     They formed up, in perfect silence, in two lines, facing each other between us and the fire, and then the dance - a sort of infernal and fiendish cancan - began.

2. (motocross) A trick where one leg is brought over the seat, so that both legs are on one side.

Translations

Verb

cancan (third-person singular simple present cancans, present participle cancanning, simple past and past participle cancanned)

1. To dance the cancan.

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from French cancan.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɑnˈkɑn/, /kɑ̃ˈkɑ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: can‧can
• Rhymes: -ɑn

Noun

cancan m (plural cancans)

1. cancan (French dance)

Finnish

Etymology

Borrowed from French cancan.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑŋkɑn/,
• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑnˌkɑn/,
• IPA^(key): /ˈkænˌkæn/,

Noun

cancan

1. cancan

Declension

Further reading

• “cancan”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎ (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-02

French

Etymology

Supposedly, this word originates with a dispute at the Collège de France circa 1550, over whether to use a traditional French pronunciation of Latin or a reconstructed pronunciation of Latin. One of the points of most dispute was the pronunciation of qu, with the word quamquam exemplifying this: it was pronounced in reconstructed Latin as but pronounced in French Latin as /kɑ̃.kɑ̃/ ("cancan"). After this debacle, a "cancan" came to be "any kind of scandalous performance".

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɑ̃.kɑ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

cancan m (plural cancans)

1. gossip
2. cancan (dance)

Synonyms

• commérage
• qu’en-dira-t-on
• ragot

Derived terms

• cancaner
• cancaneuse

References

Further reading

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

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French cancan.

Noun

cancan n (plural cancanuri)

1. gossip

Declension

Swedish

Etymology

Borrowed from French cancan.

Noun

cancan c

1. cancan

Declension