cancan

Signification (Anglais)

1. gossip
2. cancan (dance)

Synonymes

commérage

ragot

potin

médisance

rumeur

commentaire

papotage

commenter

contenter

racontar

Genre

♂️ Masculin

Prononcé comme (IPA)

/kɑ̃.kɑ̃/

Étymologie (Anglais)

Supposedly, this word originates with a dispute at the Collège de France circa 1550, over whether to use a traditional French pronunciation of Latin or a reconstructed pronunciation of Latin. One of the points of most dispute was the pronunciation of qu, with the word quamquam exemplifying this: it was pronounced in reconstructed Latin as [ˈkʷam.kʷã(m)] but pronounced in French Latin as /kɑ̃.kɑ̃/ ("cancan"). After this debacle, a "cancan" came to be "any kind of scandalous performance".