chair à canon
\ʃɛ.ʁ‿a ka.nɔ̃\
The verdict
“chair à canon” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Militaire faiblement gradé destiné à combattre en première ligne.
Corpus desk
Index FR-chair-a-canon · chair à canon · French
chair à canon · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | chair à canon |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ʃɛ.ʁ‿a ka.nɔ̃\ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « chair à canon » en français
Rare enough to double-check
chair à canon is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \ʃɛ.ʁ‿a ka.nɔ̃\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Militaire faiblement gradé destiné à combattre en première ligne.".
chair à canon doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is chair à canon, spelled C-H-A-I-R- -À- -C-A-N-O-N.
Definition
- 1Militaire faiblement gradé destiné à combattre en première ligne.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how chair à canon appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
On en était venu à ce point de mépris pour la vie des hommes et pour la France, d’appeler les conscrits la matière première et la chair à canon.
C’est l’enfant que la destinée, Force à jeter ses haillons Quand sonne sa vingtième année Pour entrer dans nos bataillons. Chair à canon de la bataille Toujours il succombe sans cris… C’est la canaille ! Eh bien ! j’en suis !
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.