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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cancan

Cancan \Can"can\, n. [F.] A rollicking French dance, accompanied by indecorous or extravagant postures and gestures.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
cancan

also can-can, 1848, from French, possibly from can, a French children's word for "duck" (see canard), via some notion of "waddling" too obscure or obscene to attempt to disentangle here. Or perhaps from French cancan (16c.) "noise, disturbance," echoic of quacking.

Wiktionary
cancan

n. 1 A high-kicking chorus line dance originating in France. 2 (context motocross English) A trick where one leg is brought over the seat, so that both legs are on one side. vb. To dance the cancan.

WordNet
cancan

n. a high-kicking dance of French origin performed by a female chorus line

Usage examples of "cancan".

The doorway of one of these wine-shops opened exactly between the two barricades of the Petit Cancan.

Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous.

Their frenzied, shouting, screeching fling-about of high kicks, backbends, struttings, sudden splits—danced to Maître Offenbach's rowdy cancan from Orphée aux Enfers—could hardly have been more rousingly erotic if they had danced stark naked.