cancan

• can-can

Borrowed from French cancan.

• enPR: kăn′kăn′
• (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈkænˌkæn/
• (Received Pronunciation, Scotland, India) IPA^(key): /ˈkanˌkan/
• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈkɛnˌkɛn/
• Rhymes: -ænkæn, -ankan
• Hyphenation: can‧can

cancan (plural cancans)

2. (dance) 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.

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

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

1. To dance the cancan.

Borrowed from French cancan.

• IPA^(key): /kɑnˈkɑn/, (after French) [kɑ̃ˈkɑ̃]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑn
• Hyphenation: can‧can

cancan m (plural cancans)

2. (dance) cancan (dance)

Borrowed from French cancan.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑŋkɑn/, [ˈkɑ̝ŋkɑ̝n]
• IPA^(key): /ˈkɑnˌkɑn/, [ˈkɑ̝ŋˌkɑ̝n]
• IPA^(key): /ˈkænˌkæn/, [ˈk̟æŋˌk̟æn]
• Rhymes: -ɑŋkɑn
• Syllabification^(key): can‧can
• Hyphenation^(key): can‧can

cancan

2. (dance) cancan (dance)

• “cancan”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[1] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2 July 2023

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 [ˈkʷam.kʷã(m)] but pronounced in French Latin as /kɑ̃.kɑ̃/ ("cancan"). After this debacle, a "cancan" came to be "any kind of scandalous performance".^[1]

• IPA^(key): /kɑ̃.kɑ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: can‧can

cancan m (plural cancans)

1. gossip (idle talk)
3. (dance) cancan (dance)

• commérage
• qu'en-dira-t-on
• ragot

• cancaner
• cancaneuse

• “cancan”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from French cancan.

cancan n (plural cancanuri)

1. gossip (idle talk)
3. (dance) cancan (dance)

Borrowed from French cancan.

cancan c

2. (dance) cancan (dance)