How to use cant in a sentence
28 example sentences · noun, verb, adjective
Cant means an argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup. Example: “He had the look of a prince, but the cant of a fishmonger.”
Examples of cant by meaning
nounAn argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
- He had the look of a prince, but the cant of a fishmonger.
nounSide, edge, corner, niche.
- under the cant of a hill
nounA sudden thrust, push, kick, or other impulse, producing a bias or change of direction; also, the bias or turn so given.
- to give a ball a cant
verbTo set (something) at an angle; to tilt.
- to cant a cask
- to cant a ship
- Mirrors in the compartments have been canted out of the vertical plane to reduce reflections to the passengers when seated.1979 August, Graham Burtenshaw, Michael S. Welch, “O.V.S. Bulleid's SR loco-hauled coaches - 1”, in Railway World, page 396
verbTo give a sudden turn or new direction to.
- to cant round a stick of timber
- to cant a football
More sentences with cant
- Toshing, a cant word for stealing copper sheathing from vessels' bottoms, or from dock-yard stores.From the entry tosh
- Accordingly two of the club went out and shortly after returned with a Hissian, a cant word with the soldiers, for a goose.From the entry Hissian
- "I appeal to the working men of Great Britain..not to be misled by catch-phrases about ‘the liberty of the subject’ and the ridiculous cant about a ‘Blood Tax’!"From the entry blood tax
- They alone can see through all the cant and pieties and get to the real truth.2024 March 15, Radley Balko, “The War on the Woke Trumps the Truth for Many Heterodox Thinkers”, in The UnPopulist, archived from the…. From the entry heterodoxist
- At the mention of yaffling—the cant for eating—Ewan felt a pang of hunger in his belly.2017, Vanessa Kelly, Shana Galen, Anna Campbell, Kate Noble, A Grosvenor Square Christmas. From the entry yaffle
- Why cant some people just come across a downed ship anywhere and take some pictures?2013 July 12, anonymous author, “Sirius Documentary, anyone seen it?”, in 4chan, /x/. From the entry real and straight
- I wished I had a clear, cold mind that could cut through cant and deediness to truth.1954, Victor Canning, A Handful of Silver, page 170. From the entry deediness
- I feel we cant go through another of those terrible times.1941, Virginia Woolf, suicide note. From the entry go mad
- Dude cant pick a side on this topic.2024 April 16, @king_of_games34, Twitter, archived from the original on 20 Jul 2024. From the entry mesugaki
- You said I wasn't to use cant around a gentry mort, and here she's using it more than me.2015, Sabrina Jeffries, The Art of Sinning. From the entry gentry mort
- By the time he'd finished, his clothes were clinging to his body, revealing the canted v-line of his torso.2012, D.H. Starr, Feed. Prey. Love.: Whispering Hills, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry v-line
- The injunction also became a pretext for yet another round of vituperative cant from Idaho’s reactionary congressional delegation.2008 August 16, Jeffrey St. Clair, “Last Stand in the Big Woods”, in CounterPunch. From the entry vituperative
- I just cant wait to see the movie.2005 June 27, nina, “How Stella Lost Her Groove”, in alt.gossip.celebrities (Usenet). From the entry f@ggot
- The worst kind of cant and pecksniffery.1993, TC Boyle, The Road to Wellville, Penguin, published 1994, page 390. From the entry Pecksniffery
- They are the mares' tales and cattails of sailors' cant.1921, Jacques W[ardlaw] Redway, “The Moisture of the Air: Fog and Cloud”, in Handbook of Meteorology: A Manual for Cooperative Observers…. From the entry cirrus
- Today the story changes, I welcome the windsome breeze, For if she looses all her feathers she cant fly away from me.2011, Erick Pasquale Forsythe, The Pure Language Of Love. From the entry windsome
- Hawthorne may have felt that one bouncing baby should be enough to drive the dragonism ("cant and nonsense") out of a radical woman.2007, Harold Bloom, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, page 23. From the entry dragonism
- Winter cant hack an honest debate.2006 August 9, unemployed_deity@yahoo.com, “Re: See for yourself what a lying devil Pastor Steve Winter Is!”, in alt.christnet.public…. From the entry underread
- You know who I mean – them saditty splibs, them e-lites that's so hung up on bein white that they cant even pronounce stuff right.1970, Al Young, “Snakes”, in Ishmael Reed, editor, 19 Necromancers from Now, page 355. From the entry saditty
- It's the watered-down versions you cant look at: the lacquered baroquey mirror, the dining room table with the zebra rug under it, those Chippendale chairs, the dark-painted walls.2007 December 20, Penelope Green, “Flash in the Can: Designs Soon Forgotten”, in New York Times. From the entry baroquey
Meaning of cant
- noun An argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
- noun A private or secret language used by a religious sect, gang, or other group.
- noun A language spoken by some Irish Travellers; Shelta.
Questions about cant in a sentence
- How do you use cant in a sentence?
- Cant is used as a noun, verb and adjective. For example: “He had the look of a prince, but the cant of a fishmonger.”
- What is a short sentence with cant?
- “to cant a cask”
- What does cant mean?
- Cant means an argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cant (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use cant in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/cant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.