Usage
The Thieves' Cant was a feature of popular pamphlets and plays particularly between 1590 and 1615, but continued to feature in literature through the 18th century. There are questions about how genuinely the literature reflected vernacular use in the criminal underworld. A thief in 1839 claimed that the cant he had seen in print was nothing like the cant then used by gypsies, thieves and beggars. He also said that each of these used distinct vocabularies, which overlapped, the gypsies having a cant word for everything, and the beggars using a lower style than the thieves.
In June 2009 it was reported that inmates in one English prison were using "Elizabethan Cant" as a means of communication that guards would not understand, although the words used are not part of the canon of recognised cant.
The word has also been used as a suffix to coin names for modern day jargons such as medicant, a term used to refer to the type of language employed by members of the medical profession that is largely unintelligible to lay people.
Read more about this topic: Cant (language)
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don’t are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn’t put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a lesbian.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951)
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)