chanting n.
1. singing for money, whether in the street or somewhere set aside for entertainment.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | ‘A Strolling Ballad Singer’s Ramble to London’ Political Songster 6: From pocket lodge – pull’d out my fodge, / And straightway fell to chanting. | |
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 3 Oct. 5/3: The Nonpareil’s Chaunting Club opens tomorrow evening , at the Hole in the Wall, Chancery-Lane. | |
| Swell’s Night Guide 47: A boshman every Tuesday night for hopping and chaunting. | |
| (con. 1840s–50s) London Labour and London Poor I 275/2: There is a class of ballads which may with perfect propriety be called street ballads, as they are written by street authors for street singing (or chaunting). | |
| Daily Tel. 8 Feb. 3, col. 1: The bitterest sort of weather is their [cadgers’] weather, and it doesn’t matter if it’s house-to-house work or chanting, or mud-plunging, it’s cold work [F&H]. | |
| Soul Market 36: The young woman called herself a ‘chanter,’ [...] she had maintained her mother and crippled brother by ‘chanting’. | |
| ‘Clink’ in Complete Works X (1998) 259: Chantin’s the game this time of the year. Carols. Fair twist their ’earts round, I can. |
2. the selling of a poor horse by concealing its defects and ‘crying up’ its good ones; occas. extended to the seller employing such a ruse.
| Eng. Spy I 208: The servant was a confederate, and the whole affair nothing more than a true orthodox farce of horse-chaunting got up for the express purpose of raising a temporary supply . | |
 | Gallery of Comicalities n.p.: If I have got an ’orse to sell, You’ll never find that Dick is wanting; There’s few that try it on so well, Or beat me at a bit of chaunting [F&H]. | |
| ‘English Und. Sl.’ in Variety 8 Apr. n.p.: Chantings — Horse sharps. | |
| Sharpe of the Flying Squad 229: Another popular crime was ‘Horse Chanting.’ Aged horses by a process of painting the eyebrows, sawing off teeth, and being painted with Indian ink were got to assume a youthful appearance. |
In compounds
a place, usu. a public house, where patrons (led by an expert) enjoy communal singing.
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 12 Nov. 749/1: Howard’s Coffee House [...] is one of the best chauntiing cribs in the East [End]. |
a music-hall.
| Belfast Morning News 5 Jan. 4/5: [A]t no ‘gaff’ or ‘chanting ken’ in either the respectable localities we have mentioned would such a style of entertainment be seen and heard. | |
| Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 10/2: You capture the first liker at him in a snug artful fox at some chantin ken where there’s a bona varderin serio comic, and Isle of Francer engaged. – From Biography of the Staff Bundle Courier, the gentleman who accompanies ‘seriocomics’ from music-hall to music-hall when ‘doing turns’. |
street singing.
| Kendal Mercury 3 Apr. 6/1: There’s a tidy swarm of maunderers (beggars) and molls on the chanting lark (singing) [...] sharpers (razor-grinders), and crocusses (quack doctors). |
a music-hall.
| New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus frontispiece: Introducing Houses, West-End ‘Walks,’ Chanting Slums, Flash Cribs, and Dossing Kens. |
a dishonest horse-dealer.
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Morn. Advertiser (London) 27 May 4/5: No leather-gaitered countryman, who has just sold all his sheep, was ever so confiding to ‘a chaunting cove’ at Smithfield, as the good Aberdeen to Nicholas. |
street-singing.
| Tramp-Royal on the Toby 64: So we parted; my china to try his arm at the chanting lay and I to bruise my knuckles at the knocking stunt. | |
| Beds. Times 31 Jan. 2/2: I saw him in another part of the town preparing to start the ‘chaunting lay’. He pulled off his cap, which he held invitingly for coppers in front of him [etc]. |