canaille

Borrowed from French canaille.

• IPA^(key): /kəˈnaɪ/, /kəˈneɪl/

canaille (countable and uncountable, plural canailles)

1. (countable, chiefly 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.

2. (uncountable, Canada) Shorts or inferior flour.

• canaille in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• Alliance, alliance, ancillae

• kanalje (archaic, superseded)

Borrowed from Middle French canaille, from Italian canaglia. From the sixteenth century onwards.

• IPA^(key): /ˌkaːˈnɑ.jə/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ca‧nail‧le

canaille n (plural canailles)

1. (uncountable) plebs, scum, riffraff
2. (countable) rascal, jerk, scumbag

• → Sranan Tongo: kanari
• → West Frisian: kanalje

From Middle French canaille, from Italian canaglia.

• IPA^(key): /ka.naj/, /ka.nɑj/

• Audio

  (file)

canaille f (plural canailles)

1. (archaic) rabble (collectively)
2. rascal, blackguard, scoundrel, scum

• encanaillement
• encanailler

• Danish: kanalje
• English: canaille
• Esperanto: kanajlo

• “canaille” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• alliance