Meaning of Cant | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
   countable, usually
2. Side, edge, corner, niche.
   obsolete
3. A surname.
4. A parcel, a division.
   dialectal
5. A private or secret language used by a religious sect, gang, or other group.
   countable, uncountable, usually
6. Slope, the angle at which something is set.
7. A language spoken by some Irish Travellers; Shelta.
   uncountable, usually
8. A corner (of a building).
9. Empty, hypocritical talk.
   derogatory, uncountable, usually
10. An outer or external angle.
11. Whining speech, such as that used by beggars.
    uncountable, usually
12. An inclination from a horizontal or vertical line; a slope or bevel; a tilt.
13. A blazon of a coat of arms that makes a pun upon the name (or, less often, some attribute or function) of the bearer, canting arms.
    countable, usually
14. A movement or throw that overturns something.
15. A call for bidders at a public fair; an auction.
    obsolete, uncountable, usually
16. A sudden thrust, push, kick, or other impulse, producing a bias or change of direction; also, the bias or turn so given.
17. A segment forming a side piece in the head of a cask.
18. A segment of the rim of a wooden cogwheel.
19. A piece of wood laid upon the deck of a vessel to support the bulkheads.
20. An unfinished log after preliminary cutting.

Equivalents

Examples

“He had the look of a prince, but the cant of a fishmonger.”

“I am aware that the phrase free inquiry has become too much a cant phrase soiled by the handling of the ignorant and the reckless by those who fall into the mistake of supposing that religion has its root in the understanding and by those who can see just far enough to doubt and no further.”

“He is too well grounded for all your philoſophical Cant to hurt.”

“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worſt,—the cant of criticiſm is the moſt tormenting!”

“... he knew very well that if they thought him clever they were being taken in, but it pleased him to have been able to take them in, and he tried to do so still further; he was therefore a good deal on the look-out for cants that he could catch and apply in season, and might have done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over any cant as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy ...”

“The German population as a whole had been fed 12 years of Nazi propaganda, including demonizing and dehumanizing cant about homosexual men and women.”

“[…]but numbers of these tenants or their descendants are now offering to sell their leases by cant,”

“under the cant of a hill”

“The firſt and principall perſon in the temple, vvas IRENE, or Peace; ſhe vvas placed aloft in a Cant, […]”

“Owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay.”

“It is not only of great service in keeping the boat in her due position on the sea, but also in creating a tendency immediately to recover from any sudden cant, or lurch, from a heavy wave; and it is besides beneficial in diminishing the violence of beating against the sides of the vessel which she may go to relieve.”

“to give a ball a cant”

CEFR level