cancan

American  

[kan-kan] / ˈkænˌkæn /

noun

• cancans
  plural

1. a lively high kicking dance that came into vogue about 1830 in Paris and after 1844 was used as an exhibition dance.

---

cancan British  

/ ˈkænˌkæn /

noun

1. a high-kicking dance performed by a female chorus, originating in the music halls of 19th-century Paris

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• cancans
  plural

Etymology

Origin of cancan

1840–50; < French, repetitive compound (based on can ) said to be nursery variant of canard duck; see canard

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cancan cancans

Arquette talks about the Apple TV+ comedy series in which she plays a former addict and cancan dancer who decides to become a private investigator.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2023

It is relatively quiet — Picasso would also paint cancan dancers, but not now — a suave, sophisticated crowd painted by an artist who understood its fashions, body language and interpersonal connections perfectly.

From New York Times ● May 11, 2023

Exuberant cancan melodies from the film soundtracks filtered through the galleries, seeming to animate Lautrec’s imagery.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2019

Before the giant ape and the cancan chorus, before the daydreaming misfit and the defiant dancer, before even the dinosaurs and the dragons, first there were the RVs.

From New York Times ● Jul. 5, 2018

I did not learn the cancan, but I did learn the fandango, the czardas, and the Highland fling, with many another national dance.

From 'O Thou, My Austria!' by Ossip Schubin

It fetches up a lot of gay, happy dancing, much of it with a period touch of cancans and cakewalks.

From Time Magazine Archive

Before the wedding, she did playful cancans in the vestry and, because it was a cold, snowy day, she remembers: "I put on my father's Long Johns under my wedding dress."

From Time Magazine Archive

During this time I had nothing to annoy me but the ceaseless cancans of my passengers.

From Afloat and Ashore A Sea Tale by James Fenimore Cooper

The pompous little beggars with puffed-out wattles and neck ruffs were positively doing cancans and two-steps along the prairie floor.

From The Prairie Wife by Harvey Dunn

There seems, however, really no end to cancans at Paris; for the Duke of Cambridge seems to have shared the same fate.

From The Letters of Queen Victoria : A Selection from Her Majesty's Correspondence between the Years 1837 and 1861 Volume 3, 1854-1861 by Arthur Christopher Benson