cannon
/ˈkæn.ən//ˈkænən/
cannon noun: a complete assembly, consisting of an artillery tube and a breech mechanism, firing mechanism or base cap, which is a component of a gun, howitzer or mortar, which may include muzzle appendages. Also the alternative form of canon.
Noun
cannon (countable and uncountable, plural cannons or (chiefly UK) cannon)
- A complete assembly, consisting of an artillery tube and a breech mechanism, firing mechanism or base cap, which is a component of a gun, howitzer or mortar, which may include muzzle appendages.
- Holonyms: gun, field gun; howitzer; mortar
- Any similar device for shooting material out of a tube.
- water cannon; glitter cannon; confetti cannon; potato cannon
- An autocannon.
- A bone of a horse’s leg, between the fetlock joint and the knee or hock.
- A rolled and filleted loin of meat.
- a canon of beef or lamb
- A cannon bit.
- A large muzzle-loading artillery piece.
- Near-synonym: gun (often synonymous)
- Synonyms:
- gun
- A carom.
- In English billiards, a cannon is when one’s cue ball strikes the other player’s cue ball and the red ball on the same shot; and it is worth two points.
- The arm of a player who can throw well.
- He’s got a cannon out in right.
- A hollow cylindrical piece carried by a revolving shaft, on which it may, however, revolve independently.
- A cylindrical item of plate armor protecting the arm, particularly one of a pair of such cylinders worn with a couter, the upper cannon protecting the upper arm and the lower cannon protecting the forearm.
- The pauldrons are rather weak, but the cannons of the vambraces are good and come from an Italian armour of considerably earlier date, for they have the tulip form of the first half of the century.1949, The Connoisseur
- During the second half of the century the upper cannons were often joined to the pauldrons […] Here the cannons and the couter, although separate, are joined together when worn by the points securing them to the arming […]1972, Claude Blair, European Armour: Circa 1066 to Circa 1700
- A piece which moves horizontally and vertically like a rook but captures another piece by jumping over a different piece in the line of attack.
- A pickpocket.
- I also learned never to conspicuoulsy^([sic]) watch a cannon while he was working. Pickpockets dislike being watched, even by those who may be "right," because they become uneasy and clumsy and feel conspicuous.1977, Robert S. Weppner, Street ethnography, page 70
- A good pickpocket is known to his fellows as a pistol. Rufus Dayne is a cannon. One of the best pickpockets in the country, he makes close to a million dollars a year and has no criminal record at all.2009, James Thomson, Bedlam City: Savage Worlds Edition, page 377
Verb
cannon (third-person singular simple present cannons, present participle cannoning, simple past and past participle cannoned)
- To bombard with cannons.
- To play the carom billiard shot; to strike two balls with the cue ball.
- The white cannoned off the red onto the pink.
- To fire something, especially spherical, rapidly.
- Montenegro had hardly threatened in the second period but served notice they were still potent as Nikola Vukcevic took a smart pass from Jovetic and cannoned a shot off Hennessey's shins.2011 September 2, “Wales 2-1 Montenegro”, in BBC
- To collide or strike violently, especially so as to glance off or rebound.
- […] he heard the right-hand goal post crack as a pony cannoned into it—crack, splinter, and fall like a mast.1898, Rudyard Kipling, “The Maltese Cat”, in The Day's Work
- She ran down the stairs which she had come up so nervously that morning and cannoned into Edmund at the bottom.1952, C. S. Lewis, chapter 11, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Collins, published 1998
Proper noun capitalized: Cannon
Cannon (plural Cannons)
- A surname.
- The hearing in front of Judge Aileen M. Cannon at a federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., could touch on other issues, including the scheduling of the trial.2023 July 18, Charlie Savage, “Trump Documents Hearing Could Set Off Lengthy Fight Over Classified Evidence”, in The New York Times
Also used as
cannon is also the alternative form of canon.
cannon is also the misspelling of canon.
cannon meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali
cannon in Hindi
- artillery piece
- तोप top, कमान kamān
cannon in Marathi
- artillery piece
- तोफ toph
cannon in Urdu
- artillery piece
- توپ top
cannon in Bengali
- artillery piece
- কামান kaman, তোপ tōp
More languagesFewer languages
- cannon in Telugu
- ఫిరంగి phiraṅgi
- cannon in Malayalam
- പീരങ്കി pīraṅki
- cannon in Kannada
- ತೋಪು tōpu
- cannon in Punjabi
- ਤੋਪ
- cannon in Gujarati
- તોપ top
- cannon in Odia
- ତୋପ
- cannon in Sanskrit
- नळिकम् naḷikam
- cannon in Assamese
- হিলৈ hiloi, তোপ tüp
- cannon in Nepali
- तोप top
- cannon in Pashto
- توپ top
- cannon in Tagalog
- kanyon
- cannon in Arabic
- مِدْفَع midfaʕ
- cannon in Malay
- meriam, bedil
- cannon in Indonesian
- meriam
- cannon in Thai
- ปืนใหญ่ bpʉʉn-yài
- cannon in Vietnamese
- pháo, đại pháo, súng thần công
- cannon in Myanmar
- အမြောက် a.mrauk
Examples of cannon in a sentence
- The cannons were wheeled around to bear upon the advancing troops.
- Luckily, the cannoneer was only mildly injured when his cannon malfunctioned.
- The new jacked up triple-barrel cannons helped turn the tide of the war.
Synonyms of cannon
Forms of cannon
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cannons |
| plural UK | cannon |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cannons |
| present participle | cannoning |
| past participle | cannoned |
| past | cannoned |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Cannons |
| alternative form | Channon |
Origin of cannon
Attested from around 1400 as Middle English canon, canoun, from Old French canon, from Italian cannone, from Latin canna, from Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna, “reed”), from Akkadian 𒄀 (qanû, “reed”), from Sumerian 𒄀𒈾 (gi.na) (for more, see cane). Doublet of canyon. This spelling was not fixed until about 1800.
* As an Irish surname, Anglicized from Ó Canann (“descendant of Cana”), Ó Canáin (“descendant of Canán”), from cana (“wolf cub”). Comparable to McCann, McConnon, Connon. * As an English surname, from the noun canon. * As a French surname, variant of Canon.
Words formed from cannon
- Cannon County
- Cannonism
- autocannon
- calcium cannon
- cannonade
- cannon ball
- cannonball
- cannon-ball
- cannon bit
- cannon bone
- cannon box
- cannon cocker
- cannon cracker
- cannoneer
- cannoner
- cannon fodder
- cannon-fodder
- cannon game
- cannonlike
- cannon lock
- cannon metal
- cannon pinion
- cannonproof
- cannon roll
- cannonry
- cannon shot
- chicken cannon
- custard cannon
- demi-cannon
- glass cannon
- hand cannon
- loose cannon
- megacannon
- noob cannon
- nursery cannon
- potato cannon
- slum cannon
- snow cannon
- spool cannon
- supercannon
- Vulcan cannon
- water cannon
Phrases with cannon
Words that rhyme with cannon
Questions about cannon
- What does cannon mean?
- Cannon means a complete assembly, consisting of an artillery tube and a breech mechanism, firing mechanism or base cap, which is a component of a gun, howitzer or mortar, which may include muzzle appendages.
- What is cannon in Hindi?
- Cannon in Hindi is तोप (top), कमान (kamān). See Cannon meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is cannon?
- Cannon can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce cannon?
- Cannon is pronounced /ˈkæn.ən/.
- What is the plural of cannon?
- The plural of cannon is cannons.
Words near cannon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cannon (page history and authors); Cannon (page history and authors); cannon (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); cannon (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-cannon.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cannon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cannon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.