cant n.1
1. the language of the world of professional thieves and itinerant criminal beggars; the term echoes the whining tones in which they ‘chant’ for alms; cit. 1691 refers specifically to the beggars’ whining.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Squire of Alsatia III i: ’Slife! He has got the Cant too. | |
| ‘The Poet’s Ramble after Riches’ in Writings (1704) 1: Or in a whining cant discover / The fate of some poor slighted Lover. | |
| Triumph of Wit 181: Cant is found to be the peculiar Language of no Nation; nor is there any Rule prescribed for the Learning or Understanding of it, further than from those who use it to colour over their Villanies. | |
| Conduct of Receivers and Thief-Takers 16: Those three stout rugged Fellows [...] whisper, and wink to each other in a sort of Cant. | |
| Discoveries (1774) 40: Gipsies are a People that talk Romney; that is, a Cant that no Body understands but themselves. | |
| Life’s Painter 131: That species of people, who, at the same time that they can enjoy the flights of fancy on an attic wing, yet, stooping their pinions, feel as much pleasure in the effusions of what is termed cant, flash, low wit and humour, which substantially are quickened by the same orb, as the witty compositions of a more refined taste. | |
| John Bull IV i: As well as I could make out their cant, it do seem I had rescued myself. | |
| Hamlet Travestie II ii: In spite of their cant, And their critical jargon, strut, bellow, and rant: To bamboozle the flats. | |
| Tom and Jerry I iv: He is a perfect complete walking map of the metropolis – a perfect pocket dictionary of all the flash cant, and slang patter. | |
| ‘All England Are Slanging It’ Universal Songster I 40/1: Flash is cant, cant is patter, patter is lingo, lingo is language, and language is flash. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bell’s Life in Sydney 3 Apr. 3/2: She also accompanied this [...] with a variety of expletives not to be met within Johnson or Walker’s Dictionaries; but with which the lovers of cant and filthy garbage in Sydney are most familiarly conversant . | |
| It Is Never Too Late to Mend II 245: All this not in English but in thieves’ cant, with an oath or a nasty expression at every third word. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | ‘Throw out the Flag boys!’ Grant Songster 28: Let them be leaders who never knew ‘cant’. | |
| ‘Vagrants and Vagrancy’ in Appleton’s Journal (N.Y.) 6 Sept. 307: Mayhew remarks truly that English cant is formed on the same basis as French Argot and German Rothsprache. | |
| Secrets of Tramp Life Revealed 9: Flatty ... One who does not understand the Cant. | |
| Signor Lippo 91: She looked for all the world like a gippo, and she knew all the cant, and used to palarie thick to the slaveys. | |
| Minneapolis Jrnl (MN) 24 Jan. 19/3: That was gang cant Igave you. It was gypsy slang. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 59: Cant is the secret speech of the criminal underworld. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| Life and Character of Moll King 10: This Flash, as it is called, talking in Cant Terms. | |
| Bloody Register III 168: Jenny [...] applied herself very diligently to this new study [...] in order to be the better versed in, and learn the cant language. | |
| How to Grow Rich II i: I’ve learnt all your cant words. | |
| Dict. of the Flash or Cant Lang. 163/1: Flash – the cant language. | |
| Sam Slick in England I 147: If instead of ornamenting your conversation with cant terms, and miserable slang [...] you had cultivated your mind. | |
| (con. 1840s–50s) London Labour and London Poor III 51/2: Them cant words ain’t grammatical. | |
| Saratoga in 1901 207: Cant words [...] used to be the mode at Saratoga years ago. Swell, nobby, spooney, jolly, loud, bore and a half-dozen other flash words. | |
| People of the Abyss 69: And, on asking him what the ‘spike’ was, he answered, ‘The casual ward. It’s a cant word, you know’. |