Word.ws English Dictionary

cancan

Syllables: can·can/ˈkænˌkæn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

New Zealand/ˈkɛnˌkɛn/

cancan noun: a high-kicking chorus line dance originating in France.

Noun

cancan (plural cancans)

  1. A high-kicking chorus line dance originating in France.
    • They formed up, in perfect silence, in two lines, facing each other between us and the fire, and then the dance - a sort of infernal and fiendish cancan - began.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
    1. (broadly) "Galop Infernal", a movement from Jacques Offenbach's opera Orpheus in the Underworld, commonly associated with and called the cancan.
  2. A trick where one leg is brought over the seat, so that both legs are on one side.

Verb

cancan (third-person singular simple present cancans, present participle cancanning, simple past and past participle cancanned)

  1. To dance the cancan.

cancan meaning in Urdu

cancan in Urdu

ایک طرح کا ناچ

Forms of cancan

Noun
pluralcancans
alternative formcan-can
Verb
third-person singular presentcancans
present participlecancanning
past participlecancanned
pastcancanned

Origin of cancan

Borrowed from French cancan.

Questions about cancan

What does cancan mean?
Cancan means a high-kicking chorus line dance originating in France.
What is cancan in Urdu?
Cancan in Urdu is ایک طرح کا ناچ. See Cancan meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is cancan?
Cancan can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cancan?
Cancan is pronounced /ˈkænˌkæn/ (UK).
What is the plural of cancan?
The plural of cancan is cancans.

Words near cancan in the dictionary

  1. canbottles
  2. Canby
  3. Canby paxistima
  4. Canby's mountain lover
  5. Canby's mountain-lover
  6. cancan
  7. cancaneuse
  8. cancaneuses
  9. cancanned
  10. cancanning
  11. cancans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cancan (page history and authors); cancan (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cancan.wav.

Cite this entry: “cancan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cancan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.