canaille
Letters
8 characters
Frequency Rank
#33,160
in French word usage
Misspellings
9
tracked variants
Confusables
5
similar word pairs
canaille is aFrenchnoun. It means: Vile populace. Pronounced \ka.naj\. Often confused with castille and cannelle.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | canaille |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ka.naj\ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #33,160 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for canaille is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ka.naj\. Corpus data places it at rank #33,160 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for canaille, with forms such as "acnaille", "caanille", and "canaile". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 5 confusable-pair relationships, "castille", "cannelle", "canailles", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is canaille, spelled C-A-N-A-I-L-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Vile populace.
- 2Personne malhonnête et méprisable.
- 3Enfant turbulent, remuant.
- 4Peut s'employer aussi avec une connotation affectueuse (généralement dans les expressions « petite canaille » et « vieille canaille »).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acnaille,caanille,canaile,canailel,canalile,canialle,cannaille,ccanaille,cnaaille
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for canaille
Misspelling Variants of "canaille"
Frequency rank: #33,160 in French
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "canaille"?
What does "canaille" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "canaille"?
How do you pronounce "canaille"?
What language does "canaille" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby French words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our French index: