cancan
pronunciation
How to pronounce cancan in British English:
UK [ˈkænkæn]
How to pronounce cancan in American English:
US [ˈkænˌkæn]
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- Noun:
- a high-kicking dance of French origin performed by a female chorus line
Word Origin
- cancan
- cancan: [19] The English word was borrowed from French, where it originally, in the 16th century, meant ‘noise, uproar’. Its ultimate source is unknown, although it has traditionally been associated with Latin quanquam ‘although’, taken to be the prelude to a noisy scholastic argument. Its application to the uproarious dance began in the 19th century, in French as well as English; however, its presentday association with high-kicking chorus girls (with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘extravagant and indecent gestures’) seems to be a slightly later development, since the earliest examples of its use quoted by the OED apparently refer to men: ‘He usually compromises by dancing the Can-can’, A E Sweet, Texas Siftings 1882.
- cancan (n.)
- also can-can, 1848, from French, possibly from can, a French children's word for "duck" (see canard), via some notion of "waddling" too obscure or obscene to attempt to disentangle here. Or perhaps from French cancan (16c.) "noise, disturbance," echoic of quacking.