Meaning of "thieves' cant" in the English dictionary

PRONUNCIATION OF THIEVES' CANT

thieves' cant  [θiːvz kænt]

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF THIEVES' CANT

Thieves' cant is a noun.

A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc.

WHAT DOES THIEVES' CANT MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Thieves' cant

Thieves' cant or Rogues' cant, also known as peddler's French, was a secret language which was formerly used by thieves, beggars and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries. The classic, colourful argot is now mostly obsolete, and is largely relegated to the realm of literature and fantasy role-playing, although individual terms continue to be used in the criminal subcultures of both Britain and the U.S. Its South German and Swiss equivalent is the Rotwelsch and Serbo-Croatian equivalent is Šatrovački.

Definition of thieves' cant in the English dictionary

The definition of thieves' cant in the dictionary is slang used by thieves.

TRANSLATION OF THIEVES' CANT

Find out the translation of thieves' cant to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

The translations of thieves' cant from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «thieves' cant» in English.

• Translator English - Chinese: 盗贼着
• Translator English - Spanish: no puede ladrones ´
• English: thieves´ cant
• Translator English - Hindi: चोरों ´ खिचड़ी भाषा
• Translator English - Arabic: غير قادر على السارقين
• Translator English - Russian: воровского жаргона
• Translator English - Portuguese: hipocrisia dos ladrões
• Translator English - Bengali: চোর ´ক্যান্ট
• Translator English - French: Le dévers de voleurs
• Translator English - Malay: Pencuri tidak boleh
• Translator English - German: Rotwelsch
• Translator English - Japanese: 泥棒´カント
• Translator English - Korean: 도둑 ´ 캔트
• Translator English - Javanese: Nyolong
• Translator English - Vietnamese: không thể kẻ trộm ´
• Translator English - Tamil: திருடர்கள்
• Translator English - Marathi: चोरांचा कायदे
• Translator English - Turkish: Hırsızlar cant
• Translator English - Italian: sopraelevazione ladri
• Translator English - Polish: żargon złodziei
• Translator English - Ukrainian: злодійського жаргону
• Translator English - Romanian: cant hoți /
• Translator English - Greek: cant κλέφτες »
• Translator English - Afrikaans: Diewe ´ cant
• Translator English - Swedish: tjuvar /
• Translator English - Norwegian: tyver ´ cant

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «THIEVES' CANT»

Discover the use of thieves' cant in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to thieves' cant and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature

Canting in the English Underworld in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" reports only six cases in England in which references to thieves' cant occur in court depositions rather than in imaginative literature, and all six occur after the ...

Linda Woodbridge, 2001

Thieves' Cant

Thieves' cant or Rogues' cant was a secret language (a cant or cryptolect) which was formerly used by thieves, beggars and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries.

Jesse Russell, Ronald Cohn, 2012

London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopaedia of the ...

The new style of cadgers' cant is nothing like the thieves' cant, and is done all on the rhyming principle. This way 's the caper. Suppose I want to ask a pal to come and have a glati of rum and smoke a pipe of tobacco, and have a game at cards ...

Henry Mayhew, 1851

The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600

... German Liber Vagatorum; and the literary lineage continued far beyond Harman: his work was generously plagiarized by Thomas Dekker and Samuel Rid, and his vocabulary lists of thieves' cant formed the basis of later slang dictionaries.

Arthur F. Kinney, 2000

Guy Mannering

1 etc. ken thieves ' cant house 25 .20 (see note 1025.19-20) kenna know not 60.22 kend, kenn'd past participle known 64.4,64.33,139.18,272.21 kenn'd, kend past tense knew 62.38 etc. kettle pot for cooking and boiling water 52.7, 328.25; ...

Sir Walter Scott, Peter Garside, 1999

Gate of Horn, Book of Silk

In this companion guide, Michael Andre-Driussi illuminates Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun science fiction series through dictionary-style entries on the characters, gods, locations, themes, and timelines of the ...

Michael Andre-Driussi, Gene Wolfe, 2012

A Reader in the Language of Shakespearean Drama

THIEVES' CANT IN KING LEAR S. MUSGROVE It is evident that Shakespeare, in portraying Poor Tom the abram-man, or counterfeit madman and beggar, drew on accurate knowledge, based probably on both experience and reading, of the ...

Vivian Salmon, Edwina Burness, 1987

Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern ...

It was noted as 'thieves' cant' by eighteenth-century lexicographers, and it has been well documented by Eric Partridge in successive editions of his A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (e.g. Partridge 1984). We review briefly ...

Howard Jackson, Etienne Zé Amvela, 2000

Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

A NOTE ON THIEVES'CANT (t94?) Vita's fascinations extended to philology, as witnessed by this piece on the differentiation between canL the 'tight and correct" opposite of the "loose, expeessive, and metaphorical" slang that creeps into ...

Victoria Sackville-West, Mary Ann Caws, 2003

A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey

Mort—woman (Thieves' Cant) Nae blood tae his liver—it was believed that the blood in your liver gave you courage—hence lily-livered, said of those whose livers were pale. No doubt cirrhosis did make you cowardly. Nipped that bung— stole ...

P F Chisholm, 2011