Canaille
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The lowest class of people; the rabble; the vulgar. collective, countable
"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."
- 2 Shorts or inferior flour. Canada, uncountable
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French canaille.
More for "canaille"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.