Etymology: Found c1400; rare before 1600. Words identical in form and corresponding in sense are found in many languages, Germanic, Slavonic, Romanic, Celtic. Compare Dutch kant, Middle Dutch cant, border, side, brink, edge, corner, Middle Low German kant (masculine) point, creek, border, also kante (feminine) side, edge, whence modern German kante edge, corner, border, brim, margin; also Dutch and German kante point-lace. (There is no trace of the word in the older stages of Germanic.) Also Old French cant and modern Norman cant, Walloon can side, Spanish canto, Portuguese canto, Italian canto edge, corner, side, medieval Latin cantus corner, side; with which some compare Latin canthus, Greek κανθός corner of the eye, and Latin canthus tire (? felloe) of a wheel, according to Quintilian a ‘barbarous’ word. The Welsh cant edge of the circle, Breton kan̄t circle, circumference, which were thought by Diez to represent an original Celtic word, are held by Diefenbach and Thurneysen not to be native; so that at present we cannot go beyond the Romanic canto, and its possible identity with Latin canthus. The Germanic words were probably < Romanic. It is not clear whether the English word was adopted < Old French or from Low German, or, in different senses, from both.

Etymology: Apparently connected immediately with cant v.¹ ‘to share’, and with cantle n., though in some uses it closely approaches cant n.¹; whether this is original or due to subsequent confusion is not clear.

Etymology: This and its accompanying verb presumably represent Latin cantus singing, song, chant (Provençal and Norman French cant, French chant), cantāre (Norman French canter) to sing, chant; but the details of the derivation and development of sense are unknown. Cantare and its Romanic representatives were used contemptuously in reference to the church services as early as 1183, when according to Rigord (c1200) Gest Philip. August. (1818) 11, the Cotarelli of the Bourges country ‘sacerdotes et viros religiosos captos secum ducentes, et irrisoriè cantores ipsos vocantes, in ipsis tormentis subsannando dicebant: Cantate nobis, cantores, cantate; et confestim dabant eis alapas, vel cum grossis virgis turpiter cædebant’. So far as the evidence shows, the verb appears in English first applied to the tones and language of beggars, ‘the canting crew’: this, which according to Harman was introduced c1540, may have come down from the religious mendicants; or the word may have been actually made from Latin or Romanic in the rogues' jargon of the time. The subsequent development assumed in the arrangement of the verb is quite natural, though not actually established. Some have however conjectured that cant is the Irish and Gaelic cainnt (pronounced /kaɲtj/, or nearly /kantʃj/) ‘language’. And as early as 1711 the word was asserted to be derived from the name of Andrew Cant or his son Alexander Cant, Presbyterian ministers of the 17th cent. This perhaps means that the surname of the two Cants was occasionally associated derisively with canting. The arrangement of the noun here is tentative, and founded mainly on that of the verb, which appears on the whole earlier.

Etymology: Goes with cant v.⁴ The noun (if not immediately from the verb) may be an aphetic form of *encant, or *acant, < Old French encant, modern French encan (Provençal encant, Spanish encanto, Italian incanto), in same sense: of disputed origin. The loss of the initial syllable is found also in Middle High German and modern German gant in same sense. Diez takes the Romanic words as representing Latin in quantum ‘to how much?’ as the cry of the auctioneer; and with this agree the occasionally medieval Latin form inquantus, Provençal enquant, and Old French inquant, and medieval Latin verb inquantare. But no forms of the word appear to go back before the end of the 12th cent.; the earliest and ordinary forms in medieval Latin were incantus (4th declension), incantum, incantare, accantare, incantator, accantator; and Old French had enchanteur, enchantement (already in Assizes of Jerusalem). These show that the word was then identified with the Latin incantare, accantare, derivatives. of cantare to sing, in the sense of ‘proclaim, cry’. Compare Du Cange, under date 1351, ‘quod incantator publicus dicti castri..debeat facere proclamationem’, and the illustrative ‘jussit ergo Moyses praeconis voce cantari’. M. Paul Meyer thinks the identification with cantare too old and general to be explained as an error; and that there is more ground for treating the connection with in quantum as a later fancy. Compare also the modern French vendre a la criée to sell by auction, and the Scots and northern English roup, cry, shout, auction, ‘selling of goods by an outcry’ (Phillips 1678).

Etymology: Of uncertain origin: possibly belongs to one of the cant n.⁴ nouns. Compare also cantrip.

Etymology: Common in early times (13–14th cent.) in the alliterative phrase ‘kant and keen’. Apparently the same word as modern Dutch kant ‘neat, clever’, in phrase kant en klaar quite ready; also East Frisian kant ; considered by Franck to have been developed out of the noun kant edge, etc. (see cant n.¹); compare the connection of idea in ‘keen’ and ‘edge’. The actual historical relation between the Low German and the northern English word does not appear. Hence canty adj., Flemish and Low German kantig.

Etymology: Of uncertain etymology: associated in sense with cant n.², but of much earlier appearance, being the oldest verb cant in the language, and as a word preceded only by cant adj. and cant n.¹ Since the diminutive of the latter word, cantel , chanteau , cantle n., had the sense of ‘piece, fragment’, it is possible that this sense may have attached also to the primitive, and that a verb to cant ‘to divide into pieces’ may have been in Low German or Old Norman French: but it has not yet been found.

Etymology: < cant n.¹; compare Dutch and German kanten in several of the same senses.

Etymology: See cant n.³ It is not certain whether the verb or the noun came first.

Etymology: compare cant n.⁴, and the medieval Latin cognate verbs incantāre, accantāre to proclaim, cry, put up to auction, there mentioned.

Etymology: < cant adj.