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Cant vs Twist - What's the difference?

cant | twist |

As nouns the difference between cant and twist

is that cant is , a hundred while twist is twist.

cant

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) , cognate with chant.

Noun

(en-noun)
  • (countable) An argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
  • He had the look of a prince, but the cant of a fishmonger.
  • * 1836 , Three discourses preached before the Congregational Society in Watertown, page 65
  • I am aware that the phrase free inquiry has become too much a cant phrase soiled by the handling of the ignorant and the reckless by those who fall into the mistake of supposing that religion has its root in the understanding and by those who can see just far enough to doubt and no further.
  • (countable, uncountable) A private or secret language used by a religious sect, gang, or other group.
  • Shelta.
  • (uncountable, pejorative) Empty, hypocritical talk.
  • People claim to care about the poor of Africa, but it is largely cant .
  • * 1749 , , Book IV ch iv
  • He is too well grounded for all your philosophical cant to hurt.
  • * 1759-1770 ,
  • 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!
  • (uncountable) Whining speech, such as that used by beggars.
  • (countable, heraldry) A blazon of a coat of arms that makes a pun upon the name of the bearer, canting arms.
  • (obsolete) A call for bidders at a public fair; an auction.
  • * Jonathan Swift
  • To sell their leases by cant .
    Synonyms
    * (private or secret language) argot, jargon, slang * (musical singing) chant, singsong

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To speak with the jargon of a class or subgroup.
  • * Ben Jonson
  • The doctor here, / When he discourseth of dissection, / Of vena cava and of vena porta, / The meseraeum and the mesentericum, / What does he else but cant ?
  • * Bishop Sanderson
  • that uncouth affected garb of speech, or canting language, if I may so call it
  • To speak in set phrases.
  • To preach in a singsong fashion, especially in a false or empty manner.
  • * Beaumont and Fletcher
  • the rankest rogue that ever canted
  • (heraldry) Of a blazon, to make a pun that references the bearer of a coat of arms.
  • (obsolete) To sell by auction, or bid at an auction.
  • (Jonathan Swift)
    (Webster 1913)

    Etymology 2

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) corner, niche
  • * Ben Jonson
  • The first and principal person in the temple was Irene, or Peace; she was placed aloft in a cant .
  • slope, the angle at which something is set.
  • *
  • Owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay.
  • An outer or external angle.
  • An inclination from a horizontal or vertical line; a slope or bevel; a tilt.
  • (Totten)
  • A movement or throw that overturns something.
  • * 1830 , The Edinburgh Encyclopedia, volume 3, page 621
  • It is not only of great service in keeping the boat in her due position on the sea, but also in creating a tendency immediately to recover from any sudden cant , or lurch, from a heavy wave; and it is besides beneficial in diminishing the violence of beating against the sides of the vessel which she may go to relieve.
  • A sudden thrust, push, kick, or other impulse, producing a bias or change of direction; also, the bias or turn so give.
  • to give a ball a cant
  • (coopering) A segment forming a side piece in the head of a cask.
  • (Knight)
  • A segment of the rim of a wooden cogwheel.
  • (Knight)
  • (nautical) A piece of wood laid upon the deck of a vessel to support the bulkheads.
  • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To set (something) at an angle.
  • to cant''' a cask; to '''cant a ship
  • To give a sudden turn or new direction to.
  • to cant''' round a stick of timber; to '''cant a football
  • To bevel an edge or corner.
  • To overturn so that the contents are emptied.
  • Etymology 3

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To divide or parcel out.
  • Etymology 4

    From (etyl), presumably from (etyl) *

    Alternative forms

    * kant

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (British, dialect) lively, lusty.
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    twist

    English

    (wikipedia twist)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A twisting force.
  • Anything twisted, or the act of twisting.
  • * 1906 , (Edith Nesbit), (The Railway Children) Chapter 8
  • Peter was always proud afterwards when he remembered that, with the Bargee's furious fingers tightening on his ear, the Bargee's crimson countenance close to his own, the Bargee's hot breath on his neck, he had the courage to speak the truth.
    "I wasn't catching fish," said Peter.
    "That's not your fault, I'll be bound," said the man, giving Peter's ear a twist'—not a hard one—but still a ' twist .
  • * Addison
  • Not the least turn or twist in the fibres of any one animal which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's way of life than any other cast or texture.
  • The form given in twisting.
  • * Arbuthnot
  • [He] shrunk at first sight of it; he found fault with the length, the thickness, and the twist .
  • The degree of stress or strain when twisted.
  • A type of thread made from two filaments twisted together.
  • * 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.ii:
  • the thrid / By griesly Lachesis was spun with paine, / That cruell Atropos eftsoones vndid, / With cursed knife cutting the twist in twaine [...].
  • A sliver of lemon peel added to a cocktail, etc.
  • * 2005 , Theodore J. Albasini, The Progeny
  • Bunny sat on the only remaining stool at the leather-padded oval bar in the Iron Lounge. It was happy hour, two drinks for the price of one. She decided on a martini with a twist , and while the bartender was preparing her drink, she scanned the faces looking at the bar.
  • A sudden bend (or short series of bends) in a road, path, etc.
  • * 1899 , Edith Nesbit, The Wouldbegoods
  • But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes
  • * , chapter=1
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.}}
  • A distortion to the meaning of a word or passage.
  • An unexpected turn in a story, tale, etc.
  • * {{quote-news, 1987, October 23, Caryn James, Movie Review: No Man's Land (1987), New York Times
  • , passage=Though set in Los Angeles, the film has a familiar, television look and feel - two handsome partners, cops, criminals, fast cars and a marginal romance. The twist in the buddy-car-chase formula is that here the good guys tend to blur into the bad.}}
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 24, author=Nathan Rabin, work=The Onion AV Club
  • , title= Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3 , passage=In the abstract, Stuhlbarg’s twinkly-eyed sidekick suggests Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2 by way of late-period Robin Williams with an alien twist , but Stuhlbarg makes a character that easily could have come across as precious into a surprisingly palatable, even charming man.}}
  • A type of dance characterised by rotating one’s hips. See
  • * {{quote-news, 1997, April 22, Jennifer Dunning, Surviving It All, Dismissals, Tours and Balanchine, New York Times
  • , passage=She taught him to do the twist , having learned it herself from an Alvin Ailey dancer at Jacob's Pillow. }}
  • A rotation of the body when diving.
  • A sprain, especially to the ankle.
  • (obsolete) A twig.
  • (Chaucer)
    (Fairfax)
  • (slang) A girl, a woman.
  • * 1990 , (w, Miller's Crossing), 01:08:20
  • (Dane, speaking about a woman character) "I'll see where the twist flops"
  • (obsolete) A roll of twisted dough, baked.
  • A material for gun barrels, consisting of iron and steel twisted and welded together.
  • The spiral course of the rifling of a gun barrel or a cannon.
  • (obsolete, slang) A beverage made of brandy and gin.
  • Descendants

    * German: (l)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To turn the ends of something, usually thread, rope etc., in opposite directions, often using force.
  • To join together by twining one part around another.
  • * 1900 , , (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) Chapter 15
  • "Well, one day I went up in a balloon and the ropes got twisted , so that I couldn't come down again. It went way up above the clouds, so far that a current of air struck it and carried it many, many miles away. For a day and a night I traveled through the air, and on the morning of the second day I awoke and found the balloon floating over a strange and beautiful country."
  • To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve.
  • * Alexander Pope
  • Twist it into a serpentine form.
  • To wreathe; to wind; to encircle; to unite by intertexture of parts.
  • * Waller
  • longing to twist bays with that ivy
  • * T. Burnet
  • There are pillars of smoke twisted about wreaths of flame.
  • (reflexive) To wind into; to insinuate.
  • Avarice twists itself into all human concerns.
  • To turn a knob etc.
  • To distort or change the truth or meaning of words when repeating.
  • * Exodus 23:8
  • And you will not take a bribe, because a bribe will blind the alert, and will twist the words of the righteous.
  • To form a twist (in any of the above noun meanings).
  • To injure (a body part) by bending it in the wrong direction.
  • * 1913 , (George Bernard Shaw), Act V
  • Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you don't care a bit for her. And you don't care a bit for me.
  • * 1901 , (Henry Lawson), Joe Wilson's Courtship
  • Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.
    ‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel against a tuft of grass.
  • (of a path) To wind; to follow a bendy or wavy course; to have many bends.
  • * , chapter=1
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage=I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.}}
  • * 1926 , , He
  • My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me.
  • To cause to rotate.
  • * 1911 , (John Masefield), Jim Davis Chapter 8
  • The tide seized us and swept us along, and in the races where this happened there were sucking whirlpools, strong enough to twist us round.
  • To dance the twist (a type of dance characterised by twisting one's hips).
  • To coax.
  • * 1932 , Robert E. Howard, Dark Shanghai
  • "On the three-thousand-dollar reward John Bain is offerin' for the return of his sister," said Ace. "Now listen--I know a certain big Chinee had her kidnapped outa her 'rickshaw out at the edge of the city one evenin'. He's been keepin' her prisoner in his house, waitin' a chance to send her up-country to some bandit friends of his'n; then they'll be in position to twist a big ransome outa John Bain, see? [...]"
  • (card games) In the game of blackjack (pontoon or twenty-one), to be dealt another card.
  • Antonyms

    : stick; stay

    Derived terms

    (terms derived from the noun and verb "twist") * French twist * get one's knickers in a twist * intertwist * nontwist * overtwist * plot twist * retwist * round the twist * supertwist * twist and turn * twist around * twist drill * twist grip * twist in the wind * twist of fate * twist off * twist someone's arm * twist someone's balls * twist up * twistable * twister * twistfree * twistical * twistwood * twisty * undertwist * untwist

    Anagrams

    * English ergative verbs ----