Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The masses of the people; the proletariat.
- n. Rabble; riffraff.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The lowest orders of the people collectively; the rabble; the vulgar.
- n. Originally, a mixture of the coarser particles of flour and fine bran or shorts for feed; now occasionally used for the grade known as “fine feed” or “finished middlings.” Also spelled canail, canal, and canell.
- n. A pack (as of hounds): as, the whole canaille of miscreants; a canaille (or canaglia) of poltroons.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The lowest class of people; the rabble; the vulgar.
- n. Shorts or inferior flour.
Etymologies
- French, from Italian canaglia, pack of dogs, rabble, from cane, dog, from Latin canis; see kwon- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“The emperor has written the word canaille—“vile creature”—in the margin here.”
“As for our ministry and the intendants of the provinces, the financiers and what may be called the canaille, they felt all the extent of their loss.”
“The Count caught the popular contagion, and after exchanging tears and kisses with patriots whom a week before he had called canaille, he swore eternal fidelity to the”
“The army of the Allies, the enemy's position, the public feeling of Paris, and the hope of sharing in the honours of an engagement which was to sweep the revolutionary "canaille" before the”
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 339, January, 1844
“The spirit of Agrarianism reduced the nobility and gentry of France to a social level with the miserable "sans-culottes" of Paris, and the vile "canaille" which seems to raise itself from the midst of civil disturbances with the same ease and as naturally, as all the living engines of corruption burst into activity on the decay of the human body.”
“They pick up its light weapons on the battle-field on which their fathers perished, and re-feather against the 'canaille' the shafts which had been pointed against the 'noblesse.”
“It is curious and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob "the people" one day, and the "canaille" the next, according as it suits them.”
“canaille', but anything of 'sangre asul' had a charm for her.”
“As I said, he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, and in it was the aristocrat's undisguised contempt for the canaille.”
“Surely there is nothing in the canaille to recommend it to your aesthetic soul.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘canaille’.
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metaphoric references to dogs
As an ongoing part of my project, Dogs in Metaphor and Idiom, Illustrated, (www.metaphordogs.org) I am continually adding terms. If you know a term that fi...
dog, alpha male, at bay, bark, bird dog, bitch, bitchin, bloodhound, bulldog, canaille, canines, cerberus and 130 more...
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Collected Words - List 2
I've been saving these words FOR YEARS. Now, I've found Wordie
gasconade, zaccheus, spoor, precentor, bombazine, otiose, khamsin, bruited, viva voce, whilom, lenitive, ebullition and 244 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Nails
Any word or phrase with the letters n-a-i-l (in that order). Extra points for anything snaily.
nail, snail, nails, snails, thumbnail, fingernail, toenail, doornail, cut nail, wire nail, bullethead nail, finish nail and 35 more...
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Tricky Words from French
Loanwords from French -- both established and wet behind the ears -- that are tricky to spell or pronounce properly.
trompe l'oeil, hors d'oeuvre, oeuvre, objet d'art, objet trouvé, contretemps, milieu, métier, mise en scène, mise en place, éclat, faineant and 64 more...
amacleod03 This term has fallen out of use in the past century and even in its heyday it appears to have required some explanation. On April 23, 1899, the Galveston Daily News ran a story about conditions in Hawaii, “The Wild Effort to Hooleyize Us.�? It described the missionaries’ sons as “a very ill-bred canille�? and felt compelled to add “rabble�? in parenthesis, just in case you didn’t know the meaning of the word. Jul 26, 2009
whichbe Riffraff; proletarian; the mob; rabble. (from Phrontistery) May 23, 2008
fbharjo a pack of dogs Jun 22, 2007