Heading
'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.
