Literary notes about cant (AI summary)
The term “cant” appears in literature with a rich variety of meanings, often critiquing insincerity and empty rhetoric. Authors use it to denote the affected, hypocritical language of critics and preachers, as in expressions decrying the "cant of criticism" or lamenting superficial religious phrases ([1], [2], [3]). At the same time, “cant” can refer to the specialized jargon or slang of particular groups—ranging from criminal argot to the linguistic markers of diplomatic or professional circles ([4], [5]). In this way, the word operates on several levels, both as a term for counterfeit expressions and as a label for the lofty yet hollow rhetoric that pervades certain social and political discourses ([6], [7]).
- Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
— from Familiar QuotationsA Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced toTheir Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature - Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - Her piety consisted in an occasional heaving of sighs, and uplifting of eyes to the ceiling, and the utterance of a few cant phrases.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë - 2. 132: ‘He’s a leiger at Horn’s ordinary (cant name for a bawdy-house) yonder.’
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson - ‘This was a cant term for some places in the town with the same kind of privilege as the mint of old, or the purlieus of the Fleet.
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson - No profundity, no reading, no metaphysics—nothing which the learned call spirituality, and which the unlearned choose to stigmatize as cant.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - Party speeches were delivered, which clothed the question in cant, and veiled its simple meaning in a woven wind of words.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
