canaille
Pronunciation
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.005
Pronunciation
- IPA: /kəˈnaɪ/, /kəˈneɪl/
canaille
- (countable, mostly, in the plural) The lowest class of people; the rabble; the vulgar.
- 1937, P. G. Wodehouse, 'Lord Emsworth and Others', Overlook, Woodstock: 2002, pp 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.
- 1553, Ambroise Paré. Journeys In Diverse Places (The Journey to Hesdin)
- 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. Again I begged him to level the cannon, telling him, “The more dead, the fewer enemies;” which he did for my sake: and the shot killed fifteen or sixteen, and wounded many.
- 1937, P. G. Wodehouse, 'Lord Emsworth and Others', Overlook, Woodstock: 2002, pp 99-100.
- (uncountable, Canada) Shorts or inferior flour.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.005