canton
/ˈkæntən/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.55 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A division of a political unit.
noun
A division of a political unit.
noun
A division of a political unit.
noun
A division of a political unit.
noun
A subdivision of a flag, the rectangular inset on the upper hoist (i.e., flagpole) side, the upper-left quadrant of a flag, (the stars of the US national flag are in a canton).
Example Sentences
- "These three millions live in a small canton of Egypt which cannot maintain twenty thousand people"
- "20 May, 1686, Gilbert Burnet, letter from Nimmengen There is another piece of Holbein's, […] in which, in six several cantons, the several parts of our Saviour's passion are represented."
- "According to a peasant novelist from the Bourbonnais, this was just as true in the 1840s as it was before the Revolution: "We had not the slightest notion of the outside world. Beyond the limits of the canton, and beyond the known distances, lay mysterious lands that were thought to be dangerous and inhabited by barbarians.""
- "The king gave us the arms of England to be borne in a canton in our arms."
- "To the end of husbanding the supplies, he will cause to be cantoned in the cities and villages the greatest possible numbers of troops"
- "An army, falling back upon its lines of magazines, may … make its retreat with more security than one which has to canton, to subsist, and to extend itself to find cantonments."
Etymology
1530s, from Middle French canton, from Old French canton (“corner”); heraldic sense from the 1570s, geographic sense from c. 1600.