Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 2.pdf/36

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'I'm an original thinker, mum. Invent business opportunities. Share 'm with actors, and then we canoodle—divvy the profits. Me and Sheridan made a big thing on the Japanese advertising screen in "School for Scandal!" Big thing.'

4. (common).—To coax.

Canoodler.—See Canoodle.

Canoodling, verbal subs. (American).—Endearments.

1859. Sala, Twice Round the Clock, 11 a.m., par. 8. A sly kiss, and a squeeze, and a pressure of the foot or so, and a variety of harmless endearing blandishments, known to our American cousins (who are great adepts at sweet-hearting) under the generic name of conoodling.

1864 and 1879. [See quots. under Canoodle, sense 1.]

Cant, subs. and verb.—[As regards derivation (whether noun or verb), to signify the speech, phraseology, or whine peculiar to thieves, beggars, and vagrants, authorities differ among and with themselves: the word occurs as early as 1540, and has long since achieved respectability. Grose was probably wrong in thinking it a corruption of chaunting, and it was certainly in use long prior to the two Scotch clergymen, Oliver and Andrew Cant, who are said to have preached with such a voice and such a manner as to give their name to all speaking of the same kind. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (2 S., vii., 158) suggests as a possible source the ordinary word mendicant (fr. Lat. mendico), but this is historically improbable, and the weight of evidence is in favour of the Latin cantus, singing or song, though it must be observed that neither the ancient nor the modern usage implies a mere sing-song, but rather the whine of one bent on deceit. There is a consciousness of hypocrisy be the canting in connection with religion, politics, begging, or anything else; and this principle is recognized in the attempt on the part of The Scots Observer to substitute Bleat (subs. and verb) for the cant of æstheticism, the cant which deals with art in the language of sentiment and emotion. It has been further suggested that if the word meant singing, the A.S. cantere is a much more probable source of origin than the Latin canto or cantus; but there is an argument which seems to lend additional weight to the claim of the latter language: the French chanter, to sing, is sometimes used in the sense of cant. In answer to a whining, lying tale (in reply indeed to anything incredible whether whining or brazen), a Frenchman would say, 'Qu est ce que vous chantez là.' Whatever the derivation, however, there is little doubt that Andrew Cant has little to do with it; indeed, Pennant in his Tour in Scotland, vol. I., p. 122, says that 'Andrew canted no more than the rest of his brethren, for he lived in a whining age.']

Subs.—1. The secret speech or jargon of the vagrant classes—gipsies, thieves, beggars, etc.; hence, contemptuously, the peculiar phraseology of a particular class or subject. Identical with Thieves' Latin, St. Giles' Greek, Peddlar's French, etc. (q.v.); but for synonyms, see Flash.

1706. In Phillips. [m.]

1748. T. Dyche, Dictionary (5 ed.) Cant (s.): a barbarous broken sort of speech made use of by gypsies.

1856. C. Reade, Never too Late, ch.