Word.ws English Dictionary

cantonist

cantonist noun: a young boy in the Russian Empire who was taken to a special school to be trained for future compulsory military service.

Noun

cantonist (plural cantonists)

  1. (historical) A young boy in the Russian Empire who was taken to a special school to be trained for future compulsory military service.

Forms of cantonist

pluralcantonists

Origin of cantonist

Borrowed from Russian кантонист (kantonist).

Questions about cantonist

What does cantonist mean?
Cantonist means a young boy in the Russian Empire who was taken to a special school to be trained for future compulsory military service.
What part of speech is cantonist?
Cantonist is a noun.
What is the plural of cantonist?
The plural of cantonist is cantonists.

Words near cantonist in the dictionary

  1. cantonisation
  2. cantonise
  3. cantonised
  4. cantonises
  5. cantonising
  6. cantonist
  7. cantonists
  8. cantonization
  9. cantonizations
  10. cantonize
  11. cantonized

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cantonist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cantonist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cantonist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.