cantle

From Old Northern French cantel, Old French chantel (Modern French chanteau, Bourguignon chainteâ), from Medieval Latin cantellus, diminutive of Latin cantus (“corner”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkantəl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkæntəl/

cantle (plural cantles)

1. (obsolete) A splinter, slice, or sliver broken off something.
   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, (please specify the act number in uppercase 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.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     In one cantle of his law.

2. The raised back of a saddle.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly’, Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio 2005, p.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.

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.

• cantel, cental, lancet