Word.ws English Dictionary

Canossa

/kəˈnɒsə/

Canossa proper noun: a comune and castle town in the Province of Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, famed as the site where the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV did penance in 1077, standing three days bare-headed in the snow, in order to reverse his excommunication by Pope Gregory VII.

Proper noun

Canossa

  1. A comune and castle town in the Province of Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, famed as the site where the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV did penance in 1077, standing three days bare-headed in the snow, in order to reverse his excommunication by Pope Gregory VII.

Noun

Canossa

  1. (figuratively) An act of humiliating repentance.
    • No statement was issued on this meeting, but the world deduced that Bethlen had won all along the line, for on the 14th Gömbös read out on the wireless a declaration which was hailed as “a veritable Canossa.”1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 126

Words formed from Canossa

Phrases with Canossa

Questions about Canossa

What does Canossa mean?
Canossa means a comune and castle town in the Province of Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, famed as the site where the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV did penance in 1077, standing three days bare-headed in the snow, in order to reverse his excommunication by Pope Gregory VII.
What part of speech is Canossa?
Canossa can be a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce Canossa?
Canossa is pronounced /kəˈnɒsə/.

Words near Canossa in the dictionary

  1. canopylike
  2. canorous
  3. canorously
  4. canorousness
  5. Canosan
  6. Canossa
  7. Canossan
  8. Canossian
  9. Canossians
  10. Canouan
  11. Canove

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Canossa (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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Cite this entry: “Canossa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/canossa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.