cantle

From Middle English cantle, cantel, from Old Northern French cantel, Old French chantel (Modern French chanteau, Bourguignon chainteâ), from Medieval Latin cantellus, diminutive of Latin cantus (“corner”). Compare cant (Etymology 3).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkantəl/

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkæntəl/
• Rhymes: (US) -æntəl

cantle (plural cantles)

1. (obsolete) A splinter, slice, or sliver broken off something.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
     , Act III, Scene i:

     See how this river comes me cranking in, / And cuts me from the best of all my land / A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.

   • 1600, Edward Fairfax (tr.), The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, Book VI, xlviii:

     Their armors forged were of metal frail; / On every side thereof huge cantles flies; / The land was strewed all with plate and mail, / That on the earth, on that their warm blood lies.

   • 1644, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce: […], 2nd edition, London: [s.n.], →OCLC, book:

     In one cantle of his law.

2. The raised back of a saddle.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio, published 2005, page 93:

     He recognised a horse when he saw one, and could do more than fill a cantle.

   • 1926, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

     Next day, he returned with a camel-saddle of equal beauty, the long brass horns of its cantles adorned with exquisite old Yemeni engraving.

   • 1994, Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing:

     The traps were packed in the splitwillow basket that his father wore with the shoulderstraps loosed so that the bottom of the basket carried on the cantle of the saddle behind him.

3. (Scotland) The top of the head.
4. (Scotland) On many styles of sporran, a metal arc along the top of the pouch, usually fronting the clasp.

cantle (third-person singular simple present cantles, present participle cantling, simple past and past participle cantled)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To cut into pieces.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To cut out from.

• Lancet, cantel, cental, lancet